


Stormchaser

by winterwhite



Series: Elemental Forces [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch, Blackwatch Era, M/M, Manipulation, Slow Build, first chapter could be hanzo/jesse soulmates idk, meteorological nerdery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-09 15:30:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 45,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7807222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterwhite/pseuds/winterwhite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes trouble comes to Jesse. Sometimes Jesse goes to trouble. Sometimes something bigger is brewing around him. How it all happened, in slices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Barometer

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [[翻译]风暴追逐者](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13180431) by [amber_lynn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amber_lynn/pseuds/amber_lynn)



The Wild Horses come through town nine months before Jesse is born.

He watches the clips played again and again. They're a ragtag group in denim, flannel, wide-brimmed hats. When the omnics stored in the region awakened and began to rumble, the Wild Horses were the second to react. While the omnics put their efforts into resisting the military, the Wild Horses scouted them, tracked them, ran circles around them. They blended into the landscape when the omnics looked for metal signatures, riding bareback at full gallop, throwing old-fashioned explosives, arranging decoys in the desert, setting traps.

The omnics caught on eventually, and any Wild Horse to get near them was shredded on the spot, but they'd whittled the forces down and bought precious time. Jesse's whole region is safe thanks to them, and the whole region memorializes them, reviving their ethos, wearing their clothes. Jesse's favorite clip is the one with a white-haired woman on a rearing appaloosa, four men reining in their horses behind her. One of them has hair that looks like his. 

One of those riders was his father, his mother claims; he doesn't know which one, and later he realizes she wasn't even sure what she said. He knows she works late at nights, but it takes a while for him to really know, thanks to a very, very kind old neighbor who babysat.

She dies. The neighbors start talking about how there's no one watching him. Jesse's mom moves to a little old house, with an old-fashioned storm cellar and everything, far out of town. Jesse brings his toy soldiers to the storm cellar and uses it for a playhouse. She's off with a client when Jesse is ten and the storm lands.

He's been sick, staying inside the whole day, sleeping, and he can feel an ominous weight to the air when he wakes up. The emergency warning kicks into his old westerns, and he gets up and goes to the door. It's been raining for days, but a new kind of chaos is ruling out there. The sky is gray-green, trembling with clouds, torn up over and over with flashes of lightning. The clouds are all coming from all directions, coalescing into a wide whirl high above. The rain and the wind change directions every second, plastering his clothes to his body. It's astounding. The lightning crashes, the thunder booms, and Jesse climbs up on the porch rail and leans way out into it, shouting and cheering into the sky. The house goes dark behind him. He doesn't care.

The twisters start miles away, but he can see them forming, whorling from wide-flung barrel shapes into thin, whisking columns. They're astounding. Incredible. Twin whirlwinds, dancing under the storm. He doesn't understand the scope of the destruction they're leaving. He knows town is that direction, but he doesn't know they cross town and he doesn't see the cars thrown into houses, the trees snapped and shattered, signs upended into gardens and crops thrown onto roofs.

Jesse McCree is still cheering and whooping when the twisters turn towards the house.

He probably would have gone into the shelter when the noise of them kept getting louder, but it's definitely the hail that saves him. He sees it whipping down over the fields in streaks of pearl. Marble-sized stones come pattering over the gravel drive and bouncing up the walk. They beat against his raised hands and bounce against the porch rail to pelt him. They're a snap back to reality, a cold wake-up call skittering off a column and skipping over the top of his head.

"Frazzle!" Jesse shouts, and runs to get the cat. It's a short search, even in the dark, he knows where it hides when it gets scared (sometimes he takes it and puts it there when he knows there's going to be fireworks.) He patters over the backyard with arms brimful of a terrified gray tom that is trying to pour out, bangs into the shelter, and slams the doors. The skies open up. Lightning cracks into the old tree by the drive. The cat wails in terror. Jesse screams in glee.

Less than three minutes later, the twin tornadoes come tearing across the fields. The little house might as well be paper in their path; were they capable of noticing, they still would not have seen it. The fence ends up splintered against the door of the shelter, where Jesse sits inside. He's as close to the doors as he can get, letting the water forced in by the angry sky pour over his cat scratches, shoulders shaking, still laughing with hysterical joy.

He gets his senses back by the time the firemen drive out to check, and with his mom still... somewhere off in the night... he ends up in foster care. By the time she gets back and looks for him, the social workers are feeling damned reluctant to ship him back.

It's okay. Jesse's new foster dad has a brother who wants a lookout. By the time he's eleven, he's been cut in. The uncle knows a friend who could use some help carrying a little bottle to some friends. Jesse gets half payment up front and leaves his childhood behind.

But Jesse never forgets the love he felt when he first saw those tornadoes forming out of that storm-torn sky.


	2. A nearing thunder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On another day, Gabriel will have an idea that Jack likes.

"Hey, Morrison," Gabriel says casually.

Morrison, swearing, is punching the side of the transport's display box. The sniper's bullets hit the housing for the plugs on the other side of the big vehicle. All three bullets have left it warped. They haven't gone around yet, since that's giving the gunman a free shot, but when Gabriel checked beneath, he could see it had draped its power cables on the ground in dignified defeat. If any of the sniper's gang were conscious, and/or able to stand, Reyes is sure they'd be taking advantage.

As it is, Gabriel and Jack are waiting, pressed against the side of the transport in case of ricochets, and there's not a rustle from inside. There's also not much from the lightly armored vehicles that they got into the gates with, because those have also been hit by strategically placed bullets. They could move in an emergency, but it's not an emergency. It's the tail end of a simple operation. It was so calm Reyes took off his helmet, which is still lying in front of the transport. If Reyes wanted more proof the gunman could aim, he could just saunter out and get it.

It's been quiet for a few minutes, but neither of them is stepping out there. Ana is somewhere on the canyon walls, spotting for them.

"Hey, Morrison."

Jack looks up reluctantly. "Yeah?"

"You missed one." Gabriel holds up a helpful finger for a visual aid. "Just one." There's a scream. Reyes touches his earpiece, mockery on hold. "Report!"

"I'm okay, I'm okay." The voice pulls itself together. "The bullet didn't get through the inner layer. He shot me in the goddamn back of the knee. The goddamn-"

"Clear comms," Reyes cuts him off. It's not one of his, he'd have tested them twice over and thrown them out if they kept that shit up. Overwatch and Blackwatch are coordinating efforts on this one, under the Overwatch aegis.

"He's aiming for the gaps in armor," Jack says to him. "He doesn't have the firepower to get through it, and he knows it. That sounded like a revolver." The tight, rocky canyons bounced gunfire around and made it hell to find a single shooter. "Let's group up and flush him out."

"Stay behind cover, all of you," Reyes says to everyone. He can see Jack giving him a look. He shrugs, they're super soldiers, it's one gunman, come on. "Morrison and I have this." He switches back just to talking to Jack. "We don't even have to go hunting, you know. They have a shipment of rocket launchers in there. We can back everyone out and clear the whole damn canyon." Reyes snorts. "Don't look at me like that, we've captured enough for a trial."

Jack rubs his temple before he taps his earpiece. "Ana, anything?"

"You don't have a shooter on the ground or in the buildings," Ana answers. "I've stopped again to check the trajectories. A pistol shooter firing in those lines should have been below me, in the middle of the road."

"Keep looking." Morrison runs the brief distance in the open to dive behind a wall. A bullet cracks into the road about a meter behind him. "- bitch -" he hears Morrison bite off, not over comms, just reaction.  

"Saw muzzle flash. Repositioning."  

"I think that's his first miss," notes Reyes when she's done talking. Morrison ignores him, getting his helmet on a stick and holding it cautiously over the far edge of the wall. Reyes gives it two seconds and sprints to join him. The helmet spins merrily, with a nasty cracking noise as the visor takes a bullet. There are no shots at Reyes. The hostile isn't practiced enough to quickly switch targets, then. Tunnel vision. Impulsive enough to buy obvious bait. No spotter. Jack swears at his half-visor and puts his helmet back on. Reyes absently clenches and unclenches his fists while they wait. Morrison might want him alive, but "alive" can have generous room.

"Ana, how far are you repositioning?"

"I'm closer to the muzzle flash," she says. "You can probably see me."

Jack scoots around Reyes. Gabriel expects her to be just a bit further past them, but Jack has to lean far back and almost wide enough to be at risk before he stops. "What in hell are you doing over there?"

"Looking for a scope," she says. "I'm still not close to him." 

"Some kind of bastardized long-barrel pistol?" Reyes guesses. A short pistol barrel is shit for ranged accuracy, which is why there are rifles. But Amari isn't responding. He keeps quiet so she can work.

"He's on the roof," Ana says slowly. "I've got an eye on him."

"Have you got a shot?" Gabriel hints impatiently. If Ana sees him, she has a shot. So why isn't she shooting him?

"Yes," says Ana carefully. Reyes and Morrison trade glances. "There's two things."

"What's the first?" Jack takes over.

"Well, first, he's got a regular six-shooter," Ana says. "I wasn't sure he was your sniper. I was waiting for him to confirm by aiming for you again. He's covering the wall you're behind, and he's doing it with just a pistol. Second off, it's a boy."

"A boy?"

"Not a child but not a man. I only got a glimpse of his face. He's staying low." Ana's tone is cool. Gabriel knows she's trying not to pressure Jack to save her from shooting. "Jack, do I take the shot?"

Faced with the choice of ordering the death of a boy, or trying to save him, Morrison is the most predictable thing in the world. "No." Gabriel would be bored, except a juvenile with a pistol is taking long-distance trick shots at his team and vehicles. He thought those were bullets skipping off the transport and into the dirt, but he hasn't dug any out to check. Maybe they're the new sonic experiments he's heard so much about. That kind of toy shouldn't be in the hands of the Deadlocks. Time to have a look.

"Point us in," Morrison orders at the same time Gabriel decides. "Where can we get on top of him?"

"You can go through the building to your left. The door's about six paces out from your position, and it's open."

"I see it," Jack confirms.

"The building he's on has a false front. He's shooting from behind the decorative roof edge. He has to get through the open to get off the roof, so I can pin him down if I have to. He's on the building to the right when you come out the door, and he's near a wood ramp. If you want to flank him from both sides, there was a window a floor below -"

"I remember," says Reyes, who's been all over that building getting the holdouts. The kid couldn't have played dead, they checked for that as they went. But they caused a lot of chaos with their sudden entrance. There's places and ways a small man could trick the sensors until the raid was by.

"I'm going to take a suppressive shot on three so you can move.  I'll pin him down if he starts trying to leave the roof. One. Two. Three." Gabriel and Jack move at the same time, returning through the remains of their operation, as her shot rings out. They cross through smashed furniture and restyle dust patterns over whirled over dry boards. The blood is drying enough that occasionally, the sound of Gabriel's boot is annoying for a few steps. 

It's looking as if Reyes' side is the one that missed him. Hopefully, he's got a really fucking entertaining toy pistol, or else Morrison's going to volley that back at him as soon as they're done.

Jack and Reyes agree on the plan with hand signals and move into position. Ana says nothing, so the kid is still hiding up there, watching for targets, or waiting for them to withdraw so he can bolt, or planning his daring raid to rescue his gang, or whatever juvenile delinquents do when there's nothing to shoot at. The window is Gabriel's route up. Morrison takes the ramps.

Gabriel silently climbs the weathered boards, comes over the edge of the roof low and careful, and has a perfect view of it. The moment when Jack comes over the ramp, soft and silent, eyes on the kid's back. The moment the ramp's end, weakened by stray fire, gives. The moment Jack Morrison lands onto the rooftop, sliding on his ass with the cracked visor knocked sideways. The kid whirls, lifting a gun. It's a perfectly ordinary six-shooter. Just then, Gabriel Reyes doesn't give a damn. If Jack Morrison is killed, he's throwing kid and gun off the roof and running them over with the transports.

Instead of instantly gunning Jack down, the kid gasps in horror and freezes, the pistol up and out. From this angle, it's aimed at the bare side of Jack's face. It makes Reyes miss his own helmet. He should have had a soldier throw him one.

"Calm down, son," says Jack.

"Drop the fucking weapon," the kid spits. "Drop it!"

Jack doesn't move. "There's a sniper on you. You're surrounded. Just put it down."

"I'm not kidding." The kid isn't shooting, either. "Reach for it and I'll kill you." Reyes sees it, though, a little give in the bend of his elbows, a tremble in his wrists. He doesn't want to shoot. 

He doesn't know if Jack sees that or not, but Jack moves, glacially slow. He lifts a thumb under the strap of his rifle, swings it slowly to one side. He drops it (he has two more weapons out of sight, Gabriel knows, the kid's an idiot) and the kid stares like it's a complete surprise. Reyes would love the luxury to laugh.  

"That's mine," Jack says. "Now let's drop yours."  He holds out a hand, palm down. "Come on. It's over already. The ones that aren't dead are already in custody. You're the last one. There's nothing left to do. Just put it down."

Gabriel never learns if that would do it or not. The kid reaches up to wipe sweat out of his eyes, turns his head just enough to see Gabriel. The pistol muzzle starts to jerk towards him.

The kid's good at a distance. Given how freaked out he is, there's a chance he could miss all six shots at this range, but Reyes would rather not try it. He brings his forearms together in front of his face. Now he can't use his hands, which leaves him with the following weapons: feet, weight, body armor, momentum. Gabriel picks all of those. He charges. His armor eats two pistol shots with nothing more than dull thumps to his ribs and gut, easily covered by adrenaline.

The kid tries to dodge, but he's not getting clear in time without a launchpad and a rocket. The impact is satisfying. There's a lot of cracking sounds. Most of them are the wooden roof edge they just hit, but some sound like the kid's ribs. The six-shooter vanishes somewhere over the roof, along with most of the decorative edge. Grinning, Gabriel grabs an arm and a solid beam before the kid can follow it.

Morrison picks up his gun as Reyes frisks the kid. "He killed any of ours?" Morrison asks skeptically.

"Doubt it," Reyes says. "He got another weapon over there?" The kid whoops air back into his lungs, instantly jerks in pain, grimacing. Reyes fastens his wrists and drops him face-down on the roof. He wants to see if Morrison's finding anything, like, say, a sniper rifle. Reyes doesn't see so much as a straw and a pea. He gets back on comms and has someone bring him up the pistol. Jack makes sure the question's answered.  

"Nothing," Jack says. "He was sniping with a short-barreled revolver. From up here." They both turn their heads to look at the transports. It's rifle range. Not possible.

The kid gives a whiny groan, and tries to take his weight off his ribs on one side. They both look down. Perfectly ordinary, slightly pimply, brown hair, brown eyes when he blinks through tears, tan, scruffy, sixteen or thereabouts. Reyes remembers hearing about a juvenile working with the Deadlocks now. Apparently that's routine. Normally they'd drop in his estimation, but it seems like it's just the one, and he can see why. 

"Morrison, why don't you tell the kid about gun safety," Reyes suggests.

Jack heaves out a slow sigh, obviously unhappy to watch the kid suffer. "Son, I'm very disappointed-"

Reyes slaps his forehead. "Stop there. I've got this." He stomps in. The kid flinches, fearing a kick. "Don't play with guns. They are not safe. They are especially not safe for you. If I see you so much as looking at one, I'm going to break both your arms." Reyes reaches down, drags him up, and shakes him. "Questions? No? Good." He glances up as new footfalls land on the roof. A woman's brought the kid's pistol. "I'll take that, you take this. Not the main transport. Keep an eye on him until I get there." He shoves the kid to her. He checks the gun. Loaded. He's aware from the corner of his eye that the kid is turning to look at them. His gaze is across the rifle on the woman's back. "Arms!" he raises his voice. The boy jerks around to stare at his feet. "I thought he was going to shoot you in the face," Gabriel adds to Jack as the woman drags off her miserable burden. He gets back on the channel before Jack can answer. "Clear the road. I'm playing with guns."

"What?" asks Ana.

He waits until the kid has been hauled down the road to the transport, and the soldier's safely in with him, before he answers. He can see a couple of soldiers standing in a building, waiting to come do repairs so they can get back for lunch. They're far enough. "Ana, that stop sign by the blue car. Tell me where the bullet ends up." He pulls the trigger.

"High," she answers. "Over the P."

"I was aiming for the middle of the O."

"The gun hits about eight centimeters off and to the right," she says, trusting Reyes' aim.  

"Now I'm shooting halfway up the door of that piece of shit parked at the bend." Down past that is the transport. He can see the shiny patch of the hose attachments. It's the size of his hand. At this distance, it's a gleam. He puts his focus back on the car he wants, broadside to him.

"The aubergine car, or the slate?"

What? People who always see every detail are hell. One car's purpley-drab, the other's a beat-up not-black, and he's busy aiming, so he punts. "You tell me." He pulls the trigger. From this range he just sees a flash of white.

"You just took out the back window. Aubergine car."

"It's an ordinary six-shooter. I can't snipe shit with it." Reyes passes it to Jack. "Put another bullet in the transport cables."

Jack ignores him, flipping the weapon over, unloading it, working the pieces. "It's a fucking antique. Ana, how long did it take you to get bullets through armor joints?"

She takes a moment to think. "I was not trained to consider that sort of thing. I did not try in my first year. I could have done it then, probably."

Probably. Reyes beams.

"Stop grinning like that," Morrison does the responsible thing and tries to ruin his fun. "On someone like Ana, that kind of... talent would  be fine, but he's a criminal. He may not be ready to shoot someone face to face, but he shot at our team. He shot at our vehicles. He shot at me. He shot you. Let him go to prison."

"He didn't even draw blood," Reyes answers. "He gave everyone a practice run on staying out of sniper fire, which a couple of yours needed." He sees Jack's neck and ears flush. He's pushing it, hammering on that criticism, but Overwatch has taken on more political appointees and fewer functional ones. Maybe he can give Jack encouragement to wash some of them out. He's gone as far as he can for now, and he is trying to obtain a completely raw recruit, so he drops it for the more important angle. "Have you seen anyone better with a pistol? I want him shooting for me."

"Or he's a prodigy with that one, shit weapon, because he's had it since he could toddle. Then you'll have to let him walk free, because he's useless with anything else. Or he's going to steal from your actual soldiers and from your fucking armory."

"He's young enough to change his ways. I'll make that happen." He claps Jack on the shoulder. "Maybe you'll get lucky, and he'll choose jail over working for me."

"We're not a rehabilitation program."

"Less rehabilitation, more salvage."  

Morrison aims at the first flaw Reyes predicted. "You're criticizing my personnel? You want a green criminal. You're going to have to untrain all the bad habits he's learned, and set him straight at the same time. He's not going to be mission ready for years. Nobody else is going to take him if you get tired of him. Then you'll have a half-trained criminal you don't want and can't let go."

Gabriel smiles into the wind as if he didn't hear any of it. Grimaces. "Let's get out of this shithole," he suggests. "I'm tired of dust getting stuck to my teeth."

Jack still hasn't brought up that Reyes' side missed the kid. Maybe if Gabriel keeps him boiling, he'll overlook it. Reyes spits. Fun little stop. Blackwatch and Overwatch staff are working together to get the transport moving. Someone's crying inside. The flesh behind where his armor took bullets is starting to feel stiff and bruised. He hopes the kid's ribs are a lesson.

But that gets him thinking about how to teach him: drop the kid off with a drill sergeant for the first little stretch, and prove Jack right in part? Pair the kid off with an experienced soldier, who would probably resent it? Crush him straight into the ground and keep him in Reyes' shadow until he's sure of him, and then kick him to basic? The last one reminds Gabriel of the sick puppy his aunt had found when he was little, damn thing needed her to carry it with her round the clock for weeks-

What's he forgetting? Right. To aggravate Jack. He opens his mouth.

"He shot the transport last," Jack reasons behind him. "So he started at the ass end of the canyon, moving towards us." He starts returning Reyes' earlier mockery, extra salt. "Was I supposed to be searching your half as well as mine? Or were you just seeing how long until I noticed?"

Gabriel's teeth click. Fuck. He's getting a new shadow. He'll hammer the kid into an asset. It's Morrison's turn to be proven wrong.


	3. Faraday cage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Already have a goal, a plan, and basic knowledge before meeting with a prisoner.

Jesse McCree sits in the transport and watches the soldier lady. The inside of the transport is bright, clean, smooth, not a crack in sight, both benches molded into the sides and light panels all down its length. Jesse hates it. The towns dotting Route 66 are real, traditional, stable testaments to history, part of the character of the land. This piece of shit feels mass-produced, Omnic.

 The lady is not watching him. She's staring out the door with her head turned so he's in her peripheral vision. Jesse is not moving a damn muscle, not with his hands behind him and his ribs stinging fire through his side. It hurt to walk. It hurt to sit down. It hurts to breathe.

The soldier lady gives a nod. A shadow hits the floor of the transport, and Jesse sees a cute, broad-boned medic with a box in her hand, a little machine in the other, and a gold earpiece. She clomps over to him in heavy boots. There's a sharp look to her face, and her straight hair is smooth as glass. Jesse doesn't say anything, uncertain.

"Ribs?" she asks brightly. He nods. She jerks his shirt up and snaps the buttons in a short, ruthless gesture, brings him up from his protective hunch with a gloved palm to his shoulder, hisses between her teeth, gives him a severe look like he broke his ribs just to make work for her, and smacks the box down on the bench beside her. Jesse jumps. She doesn't appear to notice, digging into the box and coming up with a needle (the bore is the biggest he's ever seen) and a little vial that glows. Definitely glows.

"Uh, no thank you, ma'am," says Jesse.

"Beoverinaminute," she says as if she's some kind of recording and he hit a button. She wipes the side of his neck.

"Hey!" He leans away. "Elbow?"

"I am not taking off your restraints," she says crisply. "You'd do something stupid, and then I'd have to treat you longer." There's a look to her like she's happy to hurt him, more work or not.

"Don't tell me you're scared of a little needle," says the soldier lady. Jesse is prepared to get his back up, then notices her armor and the helmet under her arm look the same as all the others. He might have shot at her. 

"Tell me one thing, and I'll hold real still, promise," he says to the medic. "How many did we lose?"

There's the tiniest flicker of change in her eyes, less terrifying. "Can't tell you! Don't know. I don't see anyone who's not hurt, and I don't count up the ones I can't work on."

Jesse holds still anyway. She tried. She jabs him expertly without giving him any time to think about it. It stings so bad it brings tears to his eyes, although he tries not to cry. But as soon as she pulls the needle loose he feels a biting, warm rush through his blood, in his head, through his body. He gasps in surprise, coughs, and expects an agony that doesn't come. He looks down to where dark, ugly bruises had been glowering webs, and sees fading yellow. Holy shit.  She's already wiping her gloves down and popping the needle into a side compartment of the box. There's a whirring noise and a blast of hot air and blue light. He edges back. She snatches up the box and turns. Automatically, Jesse speaks through his surprise: "Thank you kindly, ma'am."

"Orders!" she says, and clomps away. He's not sure if she's telling him it was just what she was ordered to do, or if she has more orders, but more importantly, what was he just shot with?

"Wait, what-" she's gone and the soldier lady is ignoring him again. "What in hell was that?" Still ignoring. "Am I gonna glow in the dark now?" Ignored.

This time when the shadow hits the inside of the transport, it is not small and perky and he knows exactly who it is. There's a "dismissed" and the soldier lady goes. He slouches back, wishing the nurse had tucked his shirt back or done at least one button.

The man hangs like a thundercloud before he enters. He has to bend a lot further than the cute little nurse, but he comes in like it's not awkward at all, taps a button that slides the door up, and settles down slouching with his knees wide. Jesse has no idea what to say, but the Deadlock Gang were believers in keeping their mouths shut and Jesse's a fervent convert. He does mirror the man's pose. He can shut up and mouth off at the same time, no problem.  

"Did you have a plan?" the man asks. "No - was there any idea in your mind besides cause a shitton of property damage and get your ass hunted down?"

Jesse continues not saying shit to him. There's a flicker of impatience. The man's foot is moving before he realizes it, one broad boot coming up and slamming into the edge of the bench right between his knees. Feels like he scraped skin off the inside of one knee. More importantly, Jesse's sitting far back enough that he only feels the impact through the bench. Still, he can be moved. It gets him talking. "I get a trial."

"Sure," the man says, smiling. His teeth are white and even. "You can have lots. We're all stuck here for the time being, because someone had to go all rogue gunman and shoot the hell out of our vehicles, so you might as well talk to me."  

"That there's an Overwatch badge," Jesse says. "I'm in custody."

"Are you a lawyer or a gunman?" He pulls something out of his pocket. Datapad. Jesse relaxes again. "Gunboy? How young are the Deadlocks recruiting?" He scrolls through it with impatient little finger taps. "Did you read that article where the journalist had this interview-"

"Ain't news to me." Jesse's ears are red, he knows it. The journalist was some bleeding heart bitch who felt sorry for him, and published an article that had the Deadlocks laughing at him for weeks. The man's amused at this, and none of this is where the real trouble is, so Jesse cautiously follows along. The man's foot is still between his knees, a kind of low-key space invasion.

"Two years inside already, no incidents. Says you finished your education during your confinement. Bored?" Another tap. "Look how hopeful the warden was. Goes right from there into another complaint. Sad. You like Overwatch much?"

"Can't say I like you in my business," Jesse says. "How many died?"

"Brell says you asked her that. You have a lot of loyalty to a bunch of criminals."

"They're all I got."

"You got six of them."

Six.

Jesse doesn't break down and cry, but the air's punched out of him. Six. Out of twenty-five. Holy shit. Who?

"Who-"

"Not my problem. If they'd come out when we called them, or left the new ordinance in the crates, we might have thrown more nonlethal shit out. They hadn't seen real trouble in too long. They got confident. Where were you?"

"Up on the mesa."

A near-laugh. "Did you climb down the cliff to shoot us?"

"Y'all trapped me up there. Had to rappel down."

"Scanners should have caught you. That much sun-hot rock must have been a problem. We'll kick them back to testing." He sounds pleased to have a plan. Jesse didn't mean to give him that kind of help. He shuts his mouth again. The man gives it a couple of seconds, then looks back at his datapad and keeps scrolling down. "Father, unknown, mother living, currently... ouch, son."

Still living, currently in prison for the way she picked to make her bread. "No kin of your'n," Jesse mutters. The wound's too old to sting.

"You were a big Overwatch fan?"

Does the man have his papers from grade school, or something? Come to think of it, this is the second time he's hit on that, and a stupid amount of review of him. Usually the law throws him in jail and a lawyer asks this shit, looking for something sympathetic. It worked the first time, the judge threw the book at the Deadlock Gang member who'd been caught with him, and put Jesse on community service. Worked the second time, the police had fucked up procedure and the prosecutor wasn't interested.  Didn't help the third.

The man doesn't raise his voice, but his tone changes. "I'm talking to you."

"They're all right when they're fightin' omnics."

"What about Jack Morrison?"

"What about him?"

The datapad clicks down on the bench beside the man. He puts his boot back down and leans forward. He doesn't crack his knuckles or anything, just repeats himself soft and low. "You a fan of Jack Morrison?"

"Never met the man. Seems fine."

"I hope you'd have more to say about him if you'd pulled the trigger." What? What? Oh, shit. Ohh shit. "Deadlock spreads chaos? That's what happens when the public face of Overwatch is murdered trying to help a dumb kid off a roof. At least you'd get notoriety, until everyone realized you didn't even know."

Jack Morrison tried to talk him into dropping his weapon. Jack Morrison called him 'son.' Jack Morrison said he was disappointed in him. That actually does sting, much more than the crack about his momma. Being pitied by a journalist is bad enough, but being pitied by Jack Morrison of Overwatch? Shit. "Didn't recognise him," Jesse mutters.

"Doesn't matter. There might be Overwatch crawling around outside there, but they all know what you did," the man answers. "Even if you make parole in twenty years, he'll come testify you're a danger to the public. You went running in shooting at people without thinking about consequences. -thanks for reminding me." He thumps the side of his body armor with a fist, popping tiny, locked plates open. A knife appears in one hand. He flicks out two flattened bullets and drops them on the floor, one at a time. When he grabs the edge of the armor and snaps, it slides back into smooth segments. They lie better than before. Judging by the swiftness and precision, he's done that more times than Jesse's had coffee.

"You're Overwatch," Jesse says. "Why are you here talking to me?"

The man laughs. The knife goes away again (is that a back sheath? How does it work with armor?) and he leans forward. "Am I?"

"You've got the badge."

"Got two badges." The man even rolls his shoulder so Jesse can see the skull icon. "Maybe I'm just some kind of guide." The man shrugs. "So what did the Deadlock Gang do to you to get your loyalty?"

 "Took me in."

"Scout and lookout?" He would have said it was more attempts to get something for court, but it all felt off for that. Jesse reviewed for a minute, but if his answers were really what the stranger was trying to get, what in hell for? The man taps a finger twice on the bench, loud on the hollow shell. "Stop blanking on me, _niño_."

"Go to hell."

The stranger tips his foot to the side, hooks his toe behind Jesse's ankle, and tosses his foot up. A hand grabs his ankle and he's off the bench, on his back, a boot on his lower ribcage, before he can realize what's happening. His head hit the bench and the floor, so it takes him a minute to grasp what's going on.

 "You sure you don't want to go back to a little chat?" The man's steadily putting weight on. Jesse doesn't want his ribs broken again, the spots are still tender. His hands are still tied behind his back, and he has to try to arch to take his weight off them. He's not getting anywhere. "I said, no one will help you. You know Brell can patch you up when I need it done, now. She'll do that as many times as she's told." Jesse curses, because it's that or yelp. "All you got right now is me."

There was a guidance counselor five years ago who tried that. Not with the boot, but with the words. Jesse's back on familiar ground. "Sure," he says through his teeth.

The pressure's off. He rolls over to give himself a minute. When he looks up, the man's sitting like nothing happened. So he picks himself up, finds the bench with his elbows, and heaves himself back up. "Scout and lookout?"

"Yeah."

"Shoot anyone?"

"Ain't nobody gonna tell you that."

Little, impatient motion. He gets away with it only because that wasn't really what the man had been asking. "They let you carry a gun?"

"Yeah." Sometimes.

"Bullshit. You should be thanking me for how many I put down." Jesse's automatic jerk burns the bindings on his wrists. "They kept you as a scout and lookout. And their backup, the one who only acted in emergencies. You know why? Gunmen get a fucking equal cut. I'm sure you got thrown some pocket change. Did you trade part of your pay for the chance to test the weapons from the crates?" Jesse feels his reaction hit his face. The man rolls his eyes. "Surprised they didn't whore you out."

"I could talk a big game with armor on too," Jesse snaps.

That gets a reaction, worrisome - the man blinks twice, then grins like Jesse just held up a kitten. He doesn't say a damn thing. He just reaches up, one hand at a time, and flicks the catches under the shoulder straps of his armor. Loosens it, snaps off the big shoulder plates and the forearm plates. They go aside, the big Overwatch symbol clunked down and the skull pattern more gently over it. Then he heaves off the chest plate. The backpiece come with it. He tosses them both down beside the others.

The man's in a tight shirt, darkly stained from the sun and the confines of his armor. He's more worrisome without, when Jesse can see what's actually him. Jesse had expected the armor to make a lot more of the bulk.

"You think I'm getting a psychological advantage from my kneepads?"

"Naw."

The knife comes out again (it's in the armor, Jesse realizes, a part of it, concealed) and the man motions for him to move. He bites his lip and swings around. There's a soft slide against his wrist and the restraint hits the ground.

The knife is gone again by the time he's turned, but judging from what he saw, it's currently got its butt tucked up against the man's thigh, shielded even if  he knew the trick to getting it out. The man is sitting just like he was, but he rests both arms along the guardrail behind him. His face is neutral. He could be watching a crowd on a beach.

There's a few seconds, and then the man lifts his chin. "Where were we? Right. If they'd known you were born-"

It's a terrible idea and Jesse knows it, but the man's gloating about killing the Deadlocks and talking shit about him and his momma, and he just set himself up. He can't help it. He hits out with all his anger and grief. The man swats aside the punch for his face, takes one to the shoulder in an unimpressed way, and protects his crotch with rapidity that suggests he's not invulnerable. He gets both Jesse's wrists in one hand. The other reaches out, middle finger tucked under his thumb, and he flicks Jesse hard where a rib was broken. Jesse's pretty sure the set just gave. 

He wants to break free. He's got nothing but his weight, so he uses that. The man lets go the next time he yanks. Jesse catches himself before he falls against the bench, but that's enough that he wrenches his temper back under control. There's no point letting the asshole keep hurting him. He can't stand straight in the low transport, so he backs up and lands on the bench again, trying his best not to cry.

The worst part of getting his ass handed to him was how goddamn contemptuous it had been.

The man's back to just watching him. There's a cool approval to him, which Jesse didn't ask for and doesn't want, as Jesse settles down again. "They didn't even teach you how to fight." Jesse opens his mouth. "Shut up, nobody taught you how to fight. Who taught you how to shoot?"

Jesse wipes his face with his hand. "Beer bottles off the back fence."

"Don't bullshit me."

"I taught myself," Jesse repeats, louder. He knows it must have showed while he was shooting. He'd planned to move around between shots, but must have lost track of time while he was concentrating, as usual, and they'd had plenty of time to maneuver around him. God damn.  

"That explains why nobody told you it wasn't fucking possible." The man snorts. "They had that ability under their noses, and they didn't even bother to make it useful. I don't know why you're crying for them. Not a damn one would have come down to help you."

 "You don't know that."

"Yeah, I do. Assets get training. Pawns get distractions."

Not all of them treated him the same, and they let him help plan jobs and steal small parts, but he saves his breath. And maybe it's true enough. There'd been arguments, Abe had always wanted him to come along, but he'd always been shot down: Jesse needed more time, Jesse wasn't experienced, Jesse would be better off as a surprise attacker, kid whipping out a gun.

"Previous time imprisoned. Previous court appearances. Opening fire on Overwatch. You'll be an old man when they let you free again." He leans back. "Your venture into crime  didn't get you family, didn't get you cash, didn't even get you notoriety."

"Don't want pity."

"I don't have any. Is it that you don't get any breaks? Or do you let good chances go by?"

The question hangs in the air.

"Well, let's find out." The man cracks his knuckles, more absent than threatening, and leans forward. His elbows rest on his knees. His face is serious. Being this close seems to pack the air around Jesse, not just because his sweat-soaked shirt is starting to smell. "You ready?" Jesse feels his expression shift to poker face. "I want your loyalty, and I'm going to earn it. The Deadlocks took you in? I can do that, and better. They didn't teach you? I will, as much as you can learn. They used you as a scout? You're going to take up arms for me. You want friends? You'll back up Overwatch. They tossed you cash? I'm going to actually pay you. They let you test ordinance? You'll fire the whole damn armory for me. What do I want from you? Nothing you haven't proven willing to give. I want to be paid in obedience.

"Or you can try your luck in prison. If you're lucky you'll find a new family before you get torn into a shape where nobody wants you, and forty years from now, you'll have learned how many weapons you can improvise out of a toothbrush." The man claps, slow and sarcastic.  

It's not a choice at all. But. "That don't sound real," Jesse says. "Overwatch takes the best of the best, from all over the map."

"I told you, I'm not Overwatch. You don't know who I am until you're in." The man smiles. "See, I'm being nice. I'll tell you if you keep asking. But if you're not in with me, you can spend the next forty in solitary." His face turns thoughtful. "We'd still have to deal with you afterwards. Throw my generosity back in my face, I might decide it's worth it."

"Why me?"

"Because you got a gift."

"Then mister, you got the best goddamn birdcage in history. If there's no out, there's no out. What am I going to use pay on if I can't go nowhere?"

The man tips his head. Jesse feels like he's being weighed. "I can't teach you everything and let you run off."

He seems to be genuinely waiting for an answer. Jesse rubs his head. "So ask me to do somethin'," Jesse says. "Not just 'obedience' or shit that could be anythin'. A job where we both say it's done."

He's pretty sure that was the best thing to say. The man holds up a fist. "I said I'll train you. Complete that." One finger lifts. "When trained - and exercises to teach you do not count - the order of these doesn't matter. Run ten missions with a team I lead." Another finger. "I send my agents on three kinds of solo missions. Five of each." Another finger. "You should be passing on everything you're competent in. But once you're as good as I expect, I'm giving you someone to teach. Do that well." Last finger up and out, he turns his hand. "Impress me five times."

"How'm I going to know if you're impressed or not?"

A sharp, sharp smile. "You'll know. If you can't ever impress me again, I'll have thrown away my generosity. You'll owe me work." 

"And today don't count."

"You mean your expected minimum?"

"Sounds like a lot." Maybe all that will take him forty years anyway.

"You're damn right it's a lot. You owe me already. I had to fight Morrison to make the offer."   

"So I get it all squared away. What then?"

"I won't stop you from going. Or, if you've served well enough that others will overlook your little false start, you can transfer to them. That won't be easy. You left a bad impression today. I take care of my own, but I can't save you from your fuckups."

"So you're that sure that when it's all done, I'm gonna stay on?" He's not challenging. He's curious.

The man is utterly confident. "I think I've got you for life."

"I'm in."

The man smiles. "This transport's for my team and Morrison's. It's going to get a little crowded, so you'll be riding with me." The man starts to get up, looming over him. "Morrison won't back down on one thing. He doesn't want you seeing any of his shit. You get a little lights out while we wrap things up. I'm Captain Reyes. Welcome to Blackwatch."

That's his warning. A fist slams across before he can think of dodging. His head bounces off the transport wall, and sparks fill his vision. "Fuck!" He shoves outward as he falls. His hands don't catch anything. Disorienting. He's on the floor - no, he's half-draped on the bench.

The man is laughing so hard it hurts his stunned ears. "Nice. Thick skull. But I knew that."

Jesse spits. He only hopes he got a boot.

"Good to know I don't have to go easy on you. Let's try again. Welcome to Blackwatch."

Darkness.


	4. Dust Devil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reyes has been lied to before.
> 
> There's a reason it doesn't happen twice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I haven't even written a scene with graphic violence, but it's Reyes, so I should probably tag that now," I said when I posted Chapter 1. Well, here it is. Also, the manipulation tag, we're gonna need that.

"Get up, McCree."

Jesse wants to, kind of. On the other hand, the ground is holding him up pretty good. Ground is his buddy right now. Ground's got his back. Front. Whatever.

"Jesse McCree. Get up."

"I'll be right back," Jesse mutters to his supportive friend. He smacks his palms down on either side of his head and heaves himself to his knees. His arms are like rubber. "I'm up."

Reyes has been furious for about three solid hours now. Three hours. Jesse admires the ground, which can lie low. The rest of them have been across the creek. Up the creek. Down the creek. Crawling upstream through the creek. Crawling downstream. Spotting each other so nobody would fucking drown crawling through the creek with full packs. Climbing a tree beside the creek using each other's bodies and their packs. Climbing the tree with their packs on and only one person helping. Putting all three packs on beams and carrying them across with two people. Dragging the packs across with two to one person. A seemingly endless variety of pushups and pullups and trips back through the creek.

McCree is honest to god amazed he can move. The others have been through basic and through missions, they're fit as hell. He's still catching up to that. Deadlock wasn't much on obstacle courses.

Reyes is giving him a stare of death. Oh. Yeah, that. "I'm up, sir."

"You fall down again, and you're doing it again tomorrow. You might be anyway."

Jesse glances to the side. The others left. Reyes watches him see it. Sees he knows why. Reyes doesn't say a damn thing, just takes a cigar out and lights it. He might as well be in a contest with someone else to see who can move slower.

"You know," Reyes says, conversationally, "I'm treating you exactly like I would any other goddamn idiot recruit, but let's be clear, just between us: I can do whatever in hell I want with you."

"Sir," says Jesse, neither arguing nor entirely agreeing, just... he's listening, he's awake and upright and everything.

Reyes takes a long, slow drag. Jesse sways a tiny bit and stays up.

"All right," Reyes says. "I want to hear it. From you. Why did this nice little training exercise suddenly have to turn into that?"

If he was working on getting McCree ready to talk, he didn't have to worry about that. Jesse knows he's caught. "I lied."

" _McCree._ "

"I lied, sir."

"Mm. You're confessing, you might as well lay it all out. Why would you look me in the eye and tell me something you knew wasn't true?"

"Harris fucked up. He had his harness wrong."

"And I saw it and said 'whose is this' and you said?"

"I said 'it's mine, sir.'"

"Because you knew that with everyone scrambling to put theirs down, maybe someone keeping an eye on theirs would think they'd just gotten confused."

Jesse's gaze is on the ground. "Yes, sir."

"The ground isn't talking to you, McCree, gaze ahead. What did Harris learn from that?"

Jesse was at the goalposts of "here's your punishment, McCree," but Reyes just knocked the ball somewhere else. He mentally scrambles to cover the field.

"You're wasting my training for him," Reyes says coldly. "You must have a reason why. What did Harris learn from that?"

"Nothing. Sir - you're his goddamn idol. He's scared to shit he's washing out."

"He's exactly right. He's not learning fast enough. Doesn't look like he's the right material. No shame in that, not everyone is. But he's not going to realize it today, because some dumb motherfucker cut in and made him think he'd done fine."

Nothing was safe. Jesse said nothing.

"What's behind you, McCree?"

Jesse actually has to look, because there's so many potential things he's not sure which one caught Reyes. "The cliff?"

"The cliff. Which you know we're here for. You knew I wanted to get us here to train today. Did you think about why?"

"The harnesses."

"Did you think those harnesses looked a little high-tech to be for going up and down a fucking pile of rock?"

It's obvious. There are computers. There are several computers. And a readout in the goggles. "They are, sir."

"You're damn right. They're for accessing targets moving low, at high speed. There's no fucking parachute, there's no room for one to open. If your harness doesn't attach right, with all the wires right, to all the anchor lines... by the time we realize something went wrong, you'll be jelly spread over the ground. Too far back for us to see the stain."

Jesse is silent. He was mostly fixed on trying to understand the damn stuff, he'd barely bothered with the purpose. He knew part of what they were talking about, he had an idea of it, but the acronyms and the slang are still a closed world.

"What happens to Harris if he thinks he knows what he's doing, and he doesn't? What happens to him if he's trusting his life to his equipment, not knowing it's the equipment the poor bastard put in a knot the day before?"

"He dies, sir."

"That's if I don't pull him off this first, and send him to something he's qualified for. So let's stay on the cliff, for now. Who checks your gear?"

"My climbing buddy."

"And if it's Harris, and you've blocked his attempt to learn his ass from his elbow, what does your gear look like?" 

He's not going to fuck it up. But that's not the point. "Sir, it looks like I'm going to fall."

"Do you know how I knew you lied?"

"No, sir."

"Because I was watching Harris. I knew he didn't have it. I knew it almost looked right. I knew his buddy missed it. I knew I'd have to go back over it for everyone, because the word for not doing that is 'murder.' So when I came down the line and said 'whose is this?' I wasn't expecting an answer. When you spoke up like you were sure, I thought 'what in hell happened to Jesse McCree that he's suddenly fucking up just like Harris?' Then I looked at the last two. Perfect."

The wind picks up. There's a cool mist rising off the water.

"Everyone does blame you for today, if you were wondering. They knew only one was fucked up. They knew once you spoke up, I came down hard on everyone. But if they knew they went through that because you lied to your goddamn Captain, they'd kick your ass for me."

"Sorry, sir."

The cigar, mostly forgotten anyway, hits the ground. Reyes' boot goes over it. "For."

"Fucking over Harris. Lying to you."

Reyes circles him. "You want to know why I haven't hung you off the back of a hovercar and dragged your sorry ass back to the penal system?"

"Sir, yes, sir."

"Because that came from something I should have dealt with first. I knew it was there, but you started so well I didn't dig it up. You still think like a gang member. You'll trade discipline and honor when you see anything you want. When you have the back of the next man, you help him get what he wants, whether he should have it or not. And when you think about how to deal with the people who lay down the law, getting around me looks like the easy way. Doesn't it."

Silence.

"I asked you a question."

"I am so fucking sorry."  Jesse feels it cave his shoulders. "-sir."

"And you want?"

"Another chance, sir."

"Looks like we both learned something today. I thought all I needed was the right material, and the mind would take care of itself. But you can't be trusted until I've put in some more work."

"I'm-"

"Shut up. You can thank me. You can get some sleep. You can stop trying to protect Harris from things that aren't your responsibility."

"Thank you."

**

A datapad hits the table. Jesse was thinking. He glances up. Reyes is hanging there, in his personal space, where he must have moved to make a point. Jesse bets the point is _stop spacing out._

He taps the datapad. "Aw," he says, "I photograph good." Reyes's snort is predictable. He taps it twice, which is as far as it goes before it just circles around to the first picture. Him, walking around outside. Reyes circles the table, perching opposite him like a dark hawk, if hawks were broadly muscular. "What's this about?"

"You were noticed," said Reyes. "You didn't notice." His glance flicks impatiently to the wide open space to Jesse's right. Jesse admits that any number of people could have been strolling by recording him. Then he pulls out his gun. Jesse tenses. The gun is slapped down on the table. One bullet joins it. "Clean that. Load it. Listen."

"Yes, sir," Jesse says. It's been two weeks since he had to apologize. He is still on his fucking best behavior. He pulls the gun around. It's an automatic, he's a little slower with those, but he checks it's not loaded (Reyes doesn't give him shit, which means he did right) and starts taking it apart. Reyes slides the datapad back towards him, but leaves it lying where Jesse can see it.

"I put a target on your back. It's the same one on mine. As every one of my agents. I thought you might have more time. But as long as I have any rank at all, as long as I work with Overwatch on anything, people are going to be watching me and what I do."

Jesse nods.

" You've already seen enough to be worth money. But if I were a stranger wanting to move you somewhere you didn't want to go, I'd have a harder time picking up a cactus. Your situational awareness?" He jerks his head to the right again. "Complete shit. At the rate you're learning, self-defense is still a while away. You can't take one, you've got no chance against three. You're a liability. You need a grounding in, let's see... keeping your head during abduction, recognizing and resisting brainwashing techniques, mental defenses against torture, practice against interrogations. Maybe a couple of tours of how badly a little man with a white coat and a needle can fuck you up."

Jesse's hands are moving pretty damn slow. He concentrates. Reyes put "listen" as the last task. Part of the problem is the gun is so clean and carefully oiled, he doesn't even get why he's cleaning it.

"Lucky for you, we can get two problems solved at once. You can internalize an agent's way of thinking. You can put that damn bullheadedness to something besides getting your ass kicked. Otherwise, I'd have to wait until you're on your feet, then put you right back in, so you can see where your bad decisions come from."

Jesse's hands have stopped.

"Spit it out."

"Sounds like you're brainwashin' me anyway."

"McCree," Reyes says, in the tone he uses to ground Jesse for the next shock, "brainwashing is changing someone's thinking so carefully they can't tell it wasn't them. It is not saying 'this is what I'm going to do, this is why I'm doing it' and then going over it again in debriefing. There is nothing I'm going to do, or let happen, that I won't explain later."

"You had that ready," Jesse says. It tastes like something he should be careful not to say.

"I did." Reyes puts his chin in his jaw and turns his head side to side. "If I were you, I'd want to know it."

"So if I get kidnapped..."

"We come get you. Like we'd come get any of ours." Reyes' confidence is slightly reassuring. "The only question is, how long can we rely on you to hang on?" That is not.

"You've been through it?"

"Every inch."

Jesse puts his attention back on the pistol to give himself a little time to think. It's a nice, soothing routine. The pieces click back together. "What's this for?"

"McCree." That, thankfully, is not the answer. That is the tone he gets when Reyes thinks all the pieces are there in front of him, and he isn't looking. McCree takes a second to go back over the conversation. Nothing jumps out at him. Then he gets more literal, and obediently looks. In front of him: the pistol, the bullet, the datapad with pictures, Reyes.

His hands stop again.

"I've got time to be trained, because you," what's the word, "intercepted whoever was taking these before they could be handed off. So... you shot whoever took them?" Reyes just looks at him. Jesse looks back down. His eyes stay on the single bullet. "You're makin' me do it."

"You should," said Reyes. "Killing a spy who's been watching you is self-defense."

Jesse was kind of questioning Reyes' story in the back of his mind, too, because it would be right along Reyes' lines to have someone take a few pictures and use them on him. But Reyes wouldn't kill anyone who'd been doing what they should for him. When he's not scared of what he's gotten into, he's scared of Reyes, but Jesse's sure of that.

He shakes his head.

Reyes holds a hand out. Jesse flips the gun over and offers it. Reyes does not take it. Jesse almost pushes it in his hand, but he catches on in time. He turns sideways, flicks open the chamber, slides in the bullet. The click it makes is very, very soft. His stomach turns over. He puts the safety on, turns back, and offers it. Reyes takes it and holsters it. The datapad goes in his pocket. He stands.

"You'd better come."

He kind of knew that, thanks to Reyes having him sign his goddamn name on the bullet. There's no getting away from it. Maybe once his face has been dropped in the data banks, once every trip outside is a hope that the local networks aren't good enough to flag him and rule out all the other flags, it won't matter so much. Right now, whatever secrecy they can muster protects him. He doesn't know where on the base they end up, because he spends the entire walk stuck in his head. They go in past soldiers. Jesse doesn't know how many, later. When he wants to know.

He can't tell if it's a man or a woman. There are fingers, curled under the armrests. There's a bit of end of hair under the hood; is it styled? Trimmed? He doesn't know. The clothes aren't a tell either. All he knows is he can see the chest rising and falling, semi-regular. Panic. Whoever it is, they're in a kind of fear Jesse has never known. He doesn't think they made much noise coming in. He wonders how long that's been going on.

Jesse looks up, not really hoping, but hoping all the same. Reyes' face is closed. He raises his hand, holding the gun out. Jesse's brain has been hit with an adrenaline dump. The glimmer of light on Reyes' nose, brow, cheekbone stand out perfectly. The tiny flare of one nostril as he breathes. Reyes is life and death in this room, and Jesse...

Jesse's just Jesse. He doesn't feel like a vigilante. He doesn't feel like an agent. He feels small and cold.

He shakes his head.

Reyes prowls by. He's like an Omnic, purposeful, direct, on his way to stand behind the figure. He doesn't draw it out.  Jesse's nightmares fill in for that anyway. It all happens at once. The gun goes up, the safety goes off, there's a bang and a jerk and red and twitching and a fling of the man or woman's head forward. It hangs still. There's dripping onto its knees. Besides that, and a little curl of smoke from the hair, nothing. Death, undignified, disgusting, bloody, has ridden in on terror and has gone. McCree stands, shaky and breathing. Reyes stands, immobile, watching.

 _Godammit, that gun needs cleaning again,_ Jesse thinks. Reyes' agents will be his weapons or ready them. Jesse has nothing else. He had asked for nothing else; he'd asked for this, pathetic trapped figure, blood on the floor. It had seemed so cool, in the transport, with the new future, Overwatch arced up clear and shining in front of him. It seems so hollow now. That was a life, it would have taken him decades to learn all the tiny things that person had known. He wonders if there was a hole torn in anyone's life, if someone would be up late, looking.

He wonders if they'd have made him kill by now, in prison. Maybe he'd be dead. Maybe someone else would be watching him die, shanked maybe, or choked, head smashed in, and that someone thinking _wait- wait-_

Reyes puts the gun away and steps towards Jesse. He seems... patient about something? He doesn't move to block Jesse's view. Jesse looks away from whoever it was. Whatever they did, if they meant to hurt him, or didn't think, or didn't care, they wouldn't want to be seen like that.

Gabriel is still standing, patient. Jesse gets himself together. Reyes is the one constant thing he has; terrifying and consistent, perceptive and manipulative. Everything he does is aimed towards some terrifying, possibly partially unwanted good outcome. Everything. It's like he's waiting for Jesse to do something, catch up, get with the program. Jesse doesn't know what. He wanted the spy dead. The spy is dead. So why are they standing?

Reyes smiles like there's a joke only he and Jesse know. And because the loudest person in the room is sitting right there, occupying his mental space in the effort to not look, Jesse never hears them behind him. There's just hands on him, something over his head, he yells and struggles and that's a solid fist to his stomach. He chokes, doubled over, gagging, gasping.  Something is shoved in his mouth. He's not sure if he's going to be tased if he keeps fighting.

It wasn't Jesse Reyes was waiting for.

"It usually starts because you've let your guard down," Reyes' voice is raised in his familiar lecturing cadence. "Maybe it's not your fault, maybe it's because you got overconfident in your friends, maybe it's because there's a technological gap you didn't know about. In this case it's because you were standing with your back to the fucking door, daydreaming, McCree. All you know right now is you're caught, and they want you alive. So don't make them hurt you. Save your fucking energy."

There is a terrible, irrational horror that the body's already moved and he's going to the chair, still warm. McCree thrashes. They have to put him down. Some kind of nerve strike, Reyes hasn't even started teaching him those, numbs one side.

"Don't panic," Reyes says. "Don't - Jesus Christ, McCree." He sounds disgusted, and Jesse's very sorry about that, but he can't tell them not to put him in the chair, he can't handle that right now. He can hear footsteps. Jesse hopes for a not terrifying, actually wanted good outcome.

Darkness. 

**

 Reyes can't hide his smile, and leans back, staring at the screen. "How's your lost little lamb?"

"Safe and happy, thanks." Jack relaxes into his chair. "Thanks."

"Good to catch up with you. We've both been pretty busy." Gabriel is messing with him, but gently. Messing with Jack has never been rewarding anyway. He's so earnest he'd fall for it, every time. But he tends to focus on work too closely to be tampered with.

"Your team was excellent, as always." He's actually not that far away, they both coordinated a strike, but he's been too busy celebrating with his soldiers to tear himself from the happy band. He's also too gleeful to think twice. That's coming, Gabriel knows. "They didn't realize you were in, and then they couldn't stop you."

"Can't do it without good recon. We did know where they'd have your medic." He doesn't just mean where, geographically. One local figure had tried to assassinate a warlord; the wardlord's headquarters had turned into a beehive of flying comms and warming engines; a doctor who'd just arrived in the area on a charity mission had been kidnapped, along with her... friendly guide and driver. McCree had just been picking her up at the airport, having volunteered. Sheer luck.

Overwatch's response wasn't luck. They knew where the warlord was. They knew the medic was going to him. So they put everything from ground sensors to satellites on finding the best path to her before she did her work and was silenced. Morrison wanted to go, but he had the bigger force. He just kept the warlord's little army from joining the fun.

Jack's not stupid, he's just an insufferable, bullheaded optimist who reacts to loss, pain, and uncertainty with self-delusion. So when he says "that was quick thinking by McCree" there's already a frown line between his eyebrows.

"Surrendering, talking over your medic so she wouldn't blurt out who she was, giving a cover story where he was her brother?" Reyes nods. "I had him write up his report. Only took two fucking drafts, what in hell's wrong with kids?" McCree's priorities in writing were skewed. Were, Reyes thinks. He's still reading well-written reports (from the turn of the century,) and he'll be doing that for the rest of the day, so he'll get it right from now on.

"Don't remind me," says Jack, covering the side of his head with one hand. "At least she's a medic, she has some excuse, but I needed a goddamn dictionary for the first paragraph." Frown line still there.  "She used 'comity.' 'Comity.'" Reyes is glad he doesn't know. "Where did she even get that? I'll put someone on teaching her later. Right now, she's got her friends."

"Something's bothering you," Reyes says. "Besides your medic's vocabulary."

"Are you sure he wasn't working some kind of con, too?"

"If he couldn't act a little, I wouldn't want him as an agent."

"He came up with a reason to stay with her. He convinced them he was harmless. He got her to go along with it. He even managed to say the whole cover story where she could hear it. Everything laid out, done well." Jack shrugs. "I don't know."

Gabriel doesn't roll his eyes, too hostile, but he keeps his voice flat. "Only you would be questioning a good job done well."

Jack leans forward and outs with it. "Did you train him for that already?"

"And not a moment too early."

"What happens if you have to cut him loose and they take him in custody? Someone with our training running a jailbreak?"

"I know what you think about it," Gabriel says wearily, "but I saw a need, I met it, and the timing turned out to be pretty damn good."

"Wait," Jack says. "How much of the routine?"

That's pushing too hard, and Reyes lets his voice get flinty. "He is in my-"

"No, Gabriel." Jack sighs. "You hurt people. I don't think you've ever known how badly."

In his mind's eye he can still see McCree naked on the floor, shivering in his sleep, bloody hands cradled against his chest. "I know. I've got a code, and you know it. I didn't torture him for fun."

Jack is still wounded by the injustice. "Grown warriors have dropped to other duties because they couldn't stand going through that, and you put a, what, is he eighteen now? You put an eighteen-year-old through it? He can't even drop without life imprisonment, what kind of pressure was that?"

"If you want to complain up the chain, I'm going to stand by it. I knew he could take it, I knew he'd need it, and I knew he'd get results with it. Like I said, the timing's a bonus."

"Look," Jack says. "I appreciate you guys. Always. I appreciate your help. You've never left my back unguarded, you've never let me down. You're like my brother."

"The brother who you keep in the basement, who flays teenagers for fun-"

"I can see you smiling, you know," Jack raises his voice.  

Reyes beams. "It's the talk about skinning teenagers."

"Fuck yourself, Gabriel," Jack suggests, but he's smiling too. It dies fast. "What I'm getting at is, I'm not going to drag this up like it's just a disciplinary thing. I know the free hand you get over there. I know why. I even know you're the best person for it. I just don't want to let something happen that psychologically wrecks a kid."

"It's over, he's not wrecked," Reyes shrugs. "I wasn't going to push him through the last part, but he was handling it. I walked him through the entire thing in debriefing. He knows it's over. If I'd let him stop early, he'd still have the rest hanging over his head. That sounds worse, to me."  

Morrison's stuck between wanting to go back to being happy, and resonating with his own bad memories. "What did you do? Exactly?"

"You can have the writeup, if you want it. You don't. You saw him yourself." Jack is stuck on this, he sees. Morrison's always had peace with knowing Blackwatch is active. But it's like a suburban mom holding up a shirt she knows was made with sweatshop labor, feeling guilty about how she's already bought it to put on her child. "He's Blackwatch. Blackwatch gets the training, so he took it." He keeps conviction in his voice. It is that simple.

"There's still got to be a better way."  

Right. Reyes leans on the love of the mom for her child. "Can your little medic take even the light version? Ours get hardened, so all of yours don't have to be. I don't command any more eighteen-year-old soldiers. 'Better' is moot."

Morrison's taken care of the medic, and her friends, and he drives right into his blind spot. "I know." His shoulders slump. "I just... want to find a better way."

Gabriel shrugs. "Done is done. I want a lot of things. I haven't eaten today, what with the emergency. I want dinner. Want to meet me for it?"

"Fine." Morrison throws up his hands. It's not surrender, but it's yielded ground. He's backed off, and can probably be calmed into staying off. It just takes a nice evening with a friend. Reyes gets up and grabs his jacket.


	5. Inversion

Gabriel has blocked out the discomfort of his seat, the cold around his neck, the weight on his shoulder, the ominous rockings of the transport in high winds and the creaks and screeches of tightly packed crates. He's writing his report. In the back of his mind, he's assessing the impact on his soldiers. It's not the first time he's lost a man. He puts down all the things that are relevant. He comes to a lot of conclusions about the people he leads.

The last little thing that occurs to him, now that he thinks about it, is that if Jesse McCree doesn't love him, he's on his way.

That isn't going in the report. He rocks his head to one side and the other, stretching stiff muscles, as he files it and puts the data pad away. There's not much room. They captured or confiscated a lot of shit. Even down a man, the transport's packed. His agents are elbow to elbow behind him, uncomplaining, strapped in tight in the cold and dark. McCree got on last, wedged in by Gabriel because there was nowhere else he fit. Gabriel tolerated Jesse falling asleep on his shoulder, because leaning in the other direction's getting him cut open as soon as the turbulence bounces him off the battered crates.

McCree's interest is not news. McCree got infatuated somewhere after the first eight months, after he decided Reyes wouldn't kill him (it was ten months before Reyes agreed on that.) It's not a surprise, either. Put people in close quarters, under constant pressure, at high stakes, then let them stew in periods of boredom, and the same thing's going to happen every time. Gabriel's been discreet and careful with his own interests. If ever, it's with someone his rank, and nobody he'll work with in the future. Absolutely not anyone he commands. Any attraction to McCree doesn't factor.

But he just realized Jesse's been for the past ten months. Reyes takes a second to remember Jesse doesn't have any other friends or family and has been in and out of various states of survival. Latching onto the people around him is predictable. Even by that, his attention towards Reyes is no longer infatuation, but devotion. Gabriel didn't ask for it. He knows he's not the kind to feel some emotions as deeply as other people do. There are psych test scores to prove it, and a pile more to show he's functioning fine anyway. But if McCree is just going to hand him a motivation, he's going to think about how to use it.

There are options. McCree is getting known as having promise, but no one will take him on if Reyes cuts him loose. If Reyes wanted, he could discharge him officially, use him as a private bodyguard, have a live-in security manager with benefits and unshakeable loyalty. The idea isn't terrible. But he won't have that much time to train him while still working, and Jesse's too useful to sacrifice. Maybe someday, if Gabriel gets too high in command to personally walk a battlefield, but not now.

Reyes could also take Jesse aside and make it clear that nothing's happening. If Reyes shuts him down, Jesse is going to focus on working himself loose. He won't be gone for years, but he'll be harder to use, motivation misplaced, any loyalty misaligned. And Jesse's useful.

Or Reyes could do exactly what he's doing right now. Before this little revelation, he still had shades of doubt about McCree's loyalty.  He's also not sure if McCree's loyalty, once solid, will be more to Blackwatch or to him. By the time he leads Overwatch, McCree might want to stay in Blackwatch. There's no sense throwing Jesse away, he's useful.

Or Reyes could do exactly what he's doing now, but throw him attention from time to time. Not make him believe, but let him hope, if he wants. He can do that indefinitely. He already knows that's the most likely route. What McCree wants is McCree's business. He could decide he feels different in a few years anyway. But he'll still be in Blackwatch while he's thinking, and he'll still have spent all that time focusing on Reyes first.

(He thinks through the options individually, but the consequences of each come to him on their own.) 

A shift and a little groan tell him McCree's waking up. For a minute Jesse is still, and then Reyes can make out his head dropping in his hands. Banks was a mentor to him. It's going to hurt. Jesse sits quietly. Reyes waits patiently, and when they hit a spot of turbulence and indicator lights flick on beside him, he glances over. McCree's face is wet. 

Reyes indicated in his report that their morale is still good. It is. They're grieving as a group. They struck out savagely to avenge Banks, committed themselves to finishing the mission he died for. Now they'll mourn together. It's expected.

Jesse's more complicated. Greener, younger, he looked to Banks for direction. Jesse looks haunted in the brief flash of light, like he would turn them around if he could.

"There was nothing you could do."

Jesse makes a thin, unhappy noise, like the time Reyes showed him what suppressive gases felt like if he was slow with his mask. He doesn't argue, but Gabriel knows a few things always shut McCree up: hate, resentment, or guilt. (Anger, Reyes has noticed, makes him loud.) He's not near the enemy enough to hate like that. Resentment is too feeble an emotion to stand against this kind of grief. Guilt.

"It was a technical incompatibility," Gabriel says. The sniper was part of a small ambush, but Reyes' team had concealed cannons. The fight was short. "We had sensors, he had something that tricked them. He had his choice of three of us. He picked Banks. There wasn't any warning. There was nothing you could have done."

"The body," Jesse says. He sounds like he thinks he's not arguing.

"What about the body?" Reyes is patient.  

"He wouldn't have wanted that." Jesse's voice lifts, although he's trying to hold it down, since he knows the others are trying to sleep.

Gabriel can't argue. No one would want to be tossed off a cliff onto a floating, burning garbage scow, even dead. "You're mad at me?" They'd eliminated the sniper's position with the cannons. Gabriel had been the one to drag Banks' body over and throw him. 

The transport rocks. Straps creak and metal groans. In the next flicker of light, Jesse's eyes have a rebellious gleam. Reyes hasn't seen so much as a flicker of that in about thirteen months. He feels his fingers twitch towards a fist. "I could have taken him back to load him in the shell."

"It's a disposable emergency bunker," says Reyes clearly. They disposed of it, too, he triggered the self-destruct when their transport had arrived. "If you hadn't done what Banks wanted, we could have done our mission without your help. Then we could have come back through an ambush route, just for you." He drops his voice low, not wanting to steer resentment at Jesse if the others are listening; the kid can dig his own grave, but he'd better know that's what he's doing. "Which of us would you trade for dead meat?"  

"He wasn't that." Jesse's voice is loud and sharp enough that Reyes hears motion behind him. The damn transport's lurchy enough that they're all waiting to hear something's wrong with it.

"Banks was a good man," he answers, voice flat. "Once he left it, it was just a body. We had to keep moving, and we didn't have room for a corpse. They might have gotten it out of the water. If I hadn't put it in the fire, they'd have used it for propaganda. We'd be seeing what they did to it for years. If things had gone differently, Banks would have thrown my body off the cliff. Or yours."  

Jesse doesn't argue. Reyes has badgered into him the importance of being a moving target, of staying together. He knew it was stupid to want to stay behind with a corpse. He puts his head back in his hands. That's annoying. McCree's a fast hand and a good shot, but he still has to know a whole world of how to use those. If he's shutting down, he can't be trained.  

Reyes considers. It's not as simple as it could be. Emotionally weakened, McCree is likely to overreact to comfort and get clingy. Reyes might need to wait before solving that, which will be irritating. On the other hand, McCree is young, saw his friend's head get blown off and his body disposed of, and has just finished a long, running fight. He's clearly buckling. It could be a while before he's back to standard anyway.

There's the snap of a buckle and the slide of straps behind them. An elbows bonks the back of Gabriel's head as a teammate reaches to hug McCree. Reyes can't tell who it is, although he suspects it's Marley. He leans into the transport wall to give them room.

The transport drops a few centimeters and the turbulence light flickers. He reaches across and grabs the back of the agent's armor. Not to haul him (or her) back to strap down, since there's still others wedged in on either side, and it's worth the tradeoff. Just preventing more elbows moving in the dark. At least for the next few minutes.

"Strap in," he says, when the next few minutes are up.

"Thanks," says Jesse. Reyes isn't sure which of them he's talking to. Doesn't matter. McCree's held together, so he puts his mind back on plans. There are a lot of loose ends.

Oh, hey. There's one he could start trimming right now. And it could be useful to harden his newest agent, too. He runs it back and forth in his mind, looking for flaws, and goes with it. There's a few levers he could use to move McCree, all good. He does the mental equivalent of picking one and smacking it against his palm.

McCree sniffles a few times. Reyes gives it time, letting everyone settle down again.  The next time the lights turn on, Jesse's staring straight ahead. "The sniper was ready for us," Reyes says.

"Can't fit all kinds of sensors on," Jesse mutters.

"What happened at the next ambush?"

"More cloaking?" Jesse answers like he's barely thinking.

"The same kind. Isn't it a rule that we use different types of camoflage because we don't know what sensors are looking for us?"

Jesse sounds a notch more interested. "Maybe it was the only kind they had."

"Think about everything they threw at us today. Did they seem underfunded to you?"

At least McCree is paying attention now. "What are you getting at?"

Jesse would know if he'd started trying to follow this earlier. Reyes doesn't hide his impatience. "Why would they be sure which kind we had, _pendejo_?"

Jesse stiffens. "Someone told them."

"'Someone' is the rest of the planet and the moonbases, McCree. Narrow it down."

"Someone who saw us installing the gear, or had a look through our shit when we were unloading."

"Someone we let in, then. Like?"

"Motherfucker." That's not Jesse's response. Now that he's actually thinking, he realized it before Gabriel was done prompting.

"It's always a risk using an outsider, even one who was key in the past." Gabriel rolls his shoulders. "Now he's useless, and he knows more than we want. I'll have to pick someone who'll pay a call before we go, pry some answers out of him. One of the jobs where any warning will spook him into running, we need answers even when there's blood and crying, and he has to be dead at the end. So you're out."

"Please," says Jesse.

Reyes was overplaying that, but that answer was funny, so it's worth it. "Sell, don't beg, McCree. You're barely trained enough to be brought along. Now I'm handing you a solo interrogation and assassination?"

"Everyone else scares him shitless," McCree growls. "That bastard ruffled my hair. He won't see it coming."

It's a good answer. All Reyes wants is his death, any information is barely worth the effort. But McCree could use the practice. "I'll consider it. Prep for it. Talk to the others, ask how they'd do it, get a plan together. Have an alternate if you can't make him talk, or if you fuck up and kill him early. Get the tools to stop an emergency transmission or break into his records. Tell me who's agreed to be outside helping you if a neighbor drops by. If I decide your plan's solid, you can carry it out. You have fourteen hours before I hand it to someone else." There's a noise behind him that could be a laugh, hastily squashed and turned into a yawn. Something this easy should take McCree one, at most. But Reyes wants the team to have a chance to unpack, eat, and sleep before Jesse grills them, and he wants McCree to get input from everyone.

Reyes doubts he'll actually torture; McCree might beat the shit out of the man before he's tied up, but then he'll decide he can't follow through. He'll still have spent hours thinking about it. He'll still get comfortable with the knowledge that his teammates all have friendly pointers. Combine that with the training that made Jack squeamish, and he'll stay out of the way the next time Reyes decides to speed things up.

As long as McCree finishes the job. If not, then whoever Jesse picks as backup will, and Reyes will have to decide what to do with a gunman who can't do executions. He hopes it doesn't come to that. Jesse is becoming a favorite student. And the team just lost one man. 

"Thanks," says Jesse.

Please and thank you. Reyes rolls his eyes. "You don't have it yet. But there's not much you can do until we've landed. Get some sleep." While Jesse is out on his little task, he'll be giving everyone else a refresher in self-control. Whoever was behind him should not have laughed. He folds his arm against the wall for a headrest.

He notices a weight sagging on his shoulder before he dozes off.

**

He's never going to be used to death. 

Reyes' second-in-command is still barking orders, but he's ignoring McCree, as usual, so Jesse goes to find Reyes. The mission's over, they got their agent back. The agent's covered in blood, weeping with gratitude, missing teeth and fingers and toenails, and McCree can't look, so he left him to the medics. 

The tiny little prison is ugly, even from outside. They did a lot of damage to it (that missing corner is Jesse's handwork.) There's a trapdoor he didn't even see before, yawning wide. A terrible smell comes from inside. Jesse comes over and peers down. 

Reyes is standing over something on the ground. Jesse's inside before he realizes it's a person. 

"Another one?" There's no motion at his voice but a twitch. Jesse gasps.

Reyes jerks around. "Go tell them it's unstable and not to come back in. Go." 

Jesse's gone, with the message. But since Reyes was down there and his curiosity is awake, he goes back in and drops down. Reyes is coming back from the narrow, dark hallway. He looks at Jesse and sighs. "Come here." 

He uses that tone when he knows it's going to be bad. Jesse comes.

"How many people can the plane carry safely?" 

"Fifteen." 

"How many of us are there?"

"Fourteen."

"And the medics are demanding we rescue..." 

"Three." 

"What's that mean for him?"  

"We can't take him." Jesse says it before he looks, and stops looking. Oh, god. They must have been torturing him before they were interrupted. 

"I don't know if he could come back or not. Probably not, but I've been wrong before. I don't even know if he'd even survive being carried up there. But if we take him, our lives and the mission are at risk. If an Overwatch agent swings by to check because we're taking too long, then we have to deal with self-sacrificial heroism. If we leave him, they find him again. Where does that leave us?" 

"We're supposed to rescue friendlies," Jesse says.

"An enemy of our enemy is a shit friend. Haven't you been shot at enough to know that?" 

Reyes is using this as a teaching opportunity. He knows because that's what Reyes always does. But it's so fucking unnerving. 

"What do you want me to do?" 

"You choose. Are we leaving him for them, or are we being merciful?" Jesse opens his mouth to pick mercy, before he realizes Reyes would never endanger the mission for a dying local civilian. Maybe even Overwatch couldn't. "He can hear us talking, but he doesn't know what we'll do," Captain says. "You're dragging it out. Pick faster."

"Can we give him biotics, a chance, and leave?" 

"We could try, but it's a hell of a thing to do, because we know they'll be searching for the ones we let go. Biotics have their limits. He's not going to jump up and run for the horizon. I'm not healing him so they can torture him again." 

"We're gonna be merciful," Jesse whispers. 

"I am. I don't want you dragging it out and fucking it up. You know how to kill cleanly, and you know how to kill with certainty, but there's ways to be instant, silent, and painless. Come over here." 

"We both have guns," Jesse manages not to raise his voice. 

"Are we keeping Overwatch happy? Or not? If you want to explain to them why we did it, go ahead, I'll back you up. But this will be easier on you if they never know what has to be done." Jesse crosses over. "Put your hands over mine." 

He can't quit crying back in the helicopter. Which, when he notices, is embarrassing, since everyone else on board is elated. He forces himself to think about just rescuing the agent, how good it had felt to be able to cover the medics when they ran out single-minded. He can still remember the feeling under his hands, instant, painless break.

Reyes is right. He wouldn't have been able to put the strength into it. 

He's quit crying by the time they land, and automatically his feet start towards Reyes, who's chatting with the mission leader on the Overwatch side (not Morrison, Jesse's never seen him.) 

"Go with the others," Reyes says before Jesse can open his mouth. 

Jesse manages to replace "hunh?" with "sir?" just in time. Reyes always uses the time just after a mission to explain everything Jesse did wrong.  

"Go. They're going to celebrate. You can go too. You did good." Reyes turns back to his conversation.

Jesse goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inversions are a cool but not-often-noticed weather phenomenon. You can see them in the clouds. Since they're basically a layered temperature change, they won't ever matter to you a bit, unless you're unfortunate enough to live in an area where pollution or sound can be intensified. 
> 
> But don't set off an explosion under one. Then the sky will reflect the force right back at the ground. So: inversion, a returning of force.


	6. Fog Shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a whole world still going on outside.

"Hey there." McCree sidles into the room and shuts the door. The shape on the bed turns its head, shoulders slightly inclining. That's all. "Don't know if you're ready for company."

"I am not."

"Name's McCree. I'll be around."

Shimada doesn't respond. Jesse opens the door and is gone again.

_Contact. Course, he hates me, how much time I got?_

The reply is quick:

_Don't waste my time until you fucking have something. Also: English. The point of this system is that no one should be able to identify which agent is using which channel by text alone._

He doesn't even see him for three days, although the little dot on his datapad map roams all over the damn place, sometimes when he thinks he should be seeing him.

He doesn't see Shimada just before he's face-down in a flower planter, his own fingers around Shimada's neck, which does him no good since the man's throat is metal-plated. He yielded once he saw what Shimada was after, anyway. The man is holding up his datapad equal with the level of the flowerpot. "You have been tracking me." He sounds outraged.

McCree spits out dirt. "That, sunshine, is followin' your medical tag. When you put the damn thing on, you were told it was to help us find you whenever we thought we needed to. It ain't glued on."

" _You_ are to be one of my guides? _You?_ "

"Uh hunh. An' I ain't been followin' you, either, strictly. Just makin' sure I know where you are."

"And why would you do that?"

"Hey, I know, let's just have a guy who can sneak circles around most our staff just wander our whole base," Jesse says. "That'll be fine. Nobody bother checkin' on that from time to time, or anythin'."

The datapad is tossed back to him in a grudging kind of way. "You fight better than you speak." That is also grudging. It is probably not meant to be a compliment.  

"I practice every now and then."

"I could beat you, if I were more used to this." There's the faintest whir as his arm tracks a swift circle.

"Yeah." Jesse has been training since he was seventeen. Shimada has probably been training since he could hold an object. He'll concede that.

"You will come and practice with me. It will be my physical therapy. They will leave me alone."

"Sounds fine."

"Stop agreeing with me."

Jesse doesn't say "okay" because Reyes has either shouted or beaten self-control into him. Shimada prowls off like an angry cat. Jesse saunters after. 

It doesn't take Jesse long to figure out where Shimada's weak, but he doesn't say a damn thing, since if he can spot it, Shimada knows. Shimada is absolutely relentless at being a fucking awful, passive opponent. He puts himself in a basic stance and starts reacting to Jesse's attacks with the four same blocks. Then he adds one. Then he uses one of five basic blocks. Then he adds one. Then -

"Hang on." Jesse pulls off the bandana from around his neck and tosses it to the side. His shirt follows. "Okay." He goes back to throwing punches, jabs, hooks, the occasional kick. It's exhausting to just fight and never block, but when he holds a defensive stance, Shimada stands in a patient, basic pose. Then he goes defensive as soon as McCree starts moving. This lasts for five minutes. Ten.

Then Shimada pops a straight punch right when he wasn't expecting it and about doubles him over. Jesse reels back. Shimada stands in basic pose and doesn't follow up.

"The hell?"

"I would be doing you a disservice if I did not remind you to be ready for anything."

Since he's got a minute, Jesse pushes himself to take air deep and shake the hit off. "Sure thing, Sparkles." He shakes his arm out and starts moving, this time, forcing Genji to block while moving his feet, at least. When Genji stumbles, he slows the hell up.

He spots a trembling in the hands. "Doc's gonna have my hide if I let you work too hard on me."

"Have my hide?" The head cocks. "Send you into hiding?"

"Hide." Jesse realizes that didn't help. He holds his arm up and pinches his forearm. "Rip my skin off, tan it, use it as a wall hanging."

"I will do the same if you call me Sparkles again." Genji slides out of his basic pose. "But I will walk back now." He turns.

"Later," McCree says, with a nod and a wave of his hand.

"We will spar," Shimada says the next day. Today, that means Shimada wants to block, and then he wants to throw elbows. But he stands quietly with his hands down once, while Jesse kneels, breathing.

"I forgot how much harder my... the surface is now."

"Okay," says McCree. He wants so say something more supportive and sympathetic, but his ribs are priority right now.  

"I will get help to bring you to the doctor."

The idea of a stretcher gets him on his feet. He takes a minute. "I can walk. Gonna take more than a little elbow." He's had ribs broken more than once since Captain Reyes introduced him to the feeling. He can walk through it. Shimada is completely silent, but while Jesse is shot with biotics, he kneels down across the room, back to him.

"See? Problem solved."

"I have lost control," Shimada says, and will not speak to him again, or spar, for two days.

"Who are you?" Shimada asks, at the end of two days.

"Hunh?"

"You walk too heavily. You breathe too loudly. But you know little of how to force a surrender. You know only to overwhelm. It makes you very boring to fight. You use my family name carelessly, when I least want to hear it. Why do you come near me at all?" Metal fingers flex and relax. It reminds Jesse of Reyes, and he relaxes a little.

"Because you're hangin' around doctors all day," he says. "Cooped up, get a stethoscope waved at you if you drop something. If it was me, I'd be goin' crazy."

"Who has ordered you to do this?"

Jesse shrugs. "We're just sparring. Don't need orders for that."

"You were told to track me. Who told you that you should do that? Do not lie to me."

"Okay, I won't. I can't talk about who gives me orders. Wasn't Ziegler."

Shimada turns and walks away. Six steps later, he stops. "You are not coming?" Jesse walks with him. There is a long silence. The man doesn't seem to have any particular plan or route in mind. But then he goes up a ramp, runs up the side - runs up the side - of a crate, and turns back to look down at Jesse. He crouches, and holds out a hand. Jesse feels his mouth quirk, but he grabs his hand and uses his other hand and feet to help Shimada help him up. They're looking down into the outer loading bay.

"What was your family like?"

"Uh..." The worst part of it is that Shimada is just politely waiting. "Not."

"No brothers? No sisters?"

"No."

"There are no good memories?"

"Emergency foster family was great." Jesse tells him as much as he can about them. He tries to avoid his actual start in life; he has an idea someone as highborn and noble as Shimada isn't going to respect him, might quit associating. Shimada seems to come away with the idea that he was abandoned in a storm as a child, which is how the social system back at home remembers it. Jesse lets him have that.

"You know my story."

"I know a few things. Not all. They don't tell me much."

"You will not speak your commander's name. You are not given information. Are you only a common assassin?"

"What d'you mean, assass-"

Shimada impatiently turns. His hands dart. His fingers barely touch Jesse's skin, or stop short. He's walking through the strikes Jesse tossed his way in spars. Crippling hit, crippling hit, eye gouge, a series of killing blows. The last is hard enough to thump.

"-did that break skin?"

Jesse doesn't even need to look. "Nope."

"And you are well conditioned to take pain."

"That's me." Gabriel Reyes' sparring partner gets that.

"Assassin." Shimada hisses it.

Jesse shrugs. "I just do what I'm told."

"Dr. Angela frowns when she looks after you. Why else would she do that?"

"Don't you pity me none. You'd best ask her if you think she don't trust me."

Shimada swears at him in Japanese. There is a silence. "Bastard of a whore," Shimada adds, in case he missed any of that.

Jesse gets why; Shimada probably doesn't get a lot of answers. "Look, I can't tell you what Ziegler's thinking, cause you're asking me about Ziegler. Ask me about me."

"How old were you when you first killed?"

"Eighteen."

"Why were you not taught to capture before you were taught to kill?"

That's a good question. Shimada is also not asking him about him. He's asking him about the motivations of Gabriel Reyes. Jesse sometimes figures out a motivation, but he usually misses the other two behind the same act. "I guess because if I'm needed to get someone, they either want to come, or I get something to use. Drugs. Tools. Another set of hands. Whatever."

"Why do you want to do it?"

He should have seen that coming. He didn't, and it throws him. "I don't." Shimada doesn't say anything, doesn't move his head. "I said yes to being an agent. There was a lot more to that than I thought, when I agreed."

Shimada's head does move now, a curious little motion. "Why haven't you stopped?"

"I can't. I agreed to some terms. Specific ones. There's a lot I still have to do  before my work is done."

"Are you an assassin, or an agent?"

"I'm an agent."

Shimada gets up. "Stand."

He stands. Shimada has been getting more and more worked up this whole time, so he does it slowly.

"Throw a punch for my face."

He expects Shimada to use it to throw him, as Reyes typically does. Instead, there's a flurry of movement, ending with him kneeling on the ground, Shimada's hand still locking his arm behind his back. Metal fingers trace across his throat.

"I will teach you not to kill," Shimada says, sounding very distant. Jesse stays still, not sure what to make of it. "And then I might trust you."

"Can do," Jesse says. "Uh. Hey! Shimada-"

He's flat instantly, head ringing, vision blurry, body aching in three places, not even sure where he got hit first. "McCree. McCree." Shimada can't pronounce it quite right in his agitation, stumbling over the sharp turn of the syllables. Jesse's arm is free, but his shoulder feels wrenched. "Are you dead?"

"No. What'd you do? Why'd you do that?"

More swearing. "Bastard of a whore - do not call me by my family name. I should have known that would happen eventually. ...do you need me to carry you to Dr. Ziegler?"

"I can walk." He should have known, too. He has to move leaning against the wall, but he won't let Shimada touch him. Shimada is all apologetic crowding, clearly not sure Jesse won't pass out, and then is gone for two days.

Then Shimada corners him in a remote part of the base, backs him up against the wall, strips him naked, and explains, clinical and terrifying, how his nerves run through his body. He talks about where to hit them on every limb, every part of his back, neck, head. Jesse realizes Shimada is coming to terms with his loss of body by reviewing Jesse's. The man has no concern for Jesse's comfort. Having lost his limbs, he's got no sympathy for a numbed one. That's reinforced when Shimada starts to have Jesse hit him in turn, fingers, knuckles, elbows bouncing off his metal armor. Many of those strikes, all by themselves, put Jesse on the ground teary-eyed. Naturally, Shimada doesn't notice. He just gives feedback on whether or not it would have worked.

Shimada stands, quietly, when the lesson is over.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know my weak points." Shimada sounds small. "I don't know what to beware. I will be going into every fight waiting for someone to discover them."  

"Joints," says Jesse helpfully. The visor orients on him again.

"McCree!" Ziegler bellows the next day. Jesse turns. "McCree, you'll do damage!"

"We are stress testing, good doctor," says Shimada politely.

"Man has to know what his body can do," says Jesse, hands on the back of his head. Shimada just banged his skull off the _ceiling_ , he's the one who could use some sympathy.

"My patient does not need - your brand of ruthless violence." Ziegler censors herself from mentioning Blackwatch, and it's pretty obvious, what with her being furious. Jesse opens his mouth. Her finger points. "Out. I will speak to - your Captain."

_Why in hell is Ziegler telling me you're trying to dismantle your subject?_

_Boss, sometimes a man doesn't want to be coddled. Sometimes he wants to have a buddy help him figure out what he should worry about. He didn't grow up in the Z-Medic's infirmary._

_Guess who's paying for repairs to his metal ass? Hint: you break it, you bought it. Also: report to Harvey when you get back. Remedial English._

Jesse gets more careful. Shimada gets more angry. He punches things, screams in Japanese, cries in awful shaking sobs that rattle his armor. Jesse understands. Amazing and graceful and quick as Shimada's new body is, Shimada's old body is gone. His brother tried to kill him. He's got his old clan to wipe out. He sees his new associate as a common murderer. Hell, Jesse wouldn't be holding it together so well.

"Just so you know," Jesse helps one day, when Genji is sitting with his head down after a long, angry tirade, which turns towards him at the end and is helpfully translated, "you're callin' me a whore. Think you think you're callin' me something else. 'Bastard son of a whore' at least gets more specific."

"Thank you, McCree." Genji doesn't look up.

"It's what I do."

_All this time, and nothing?_

_Conclusion: not Blackwatch material. He's fixated on his own plans. He knows Overwatch wants to take down the Shimadas, and he's putting everything he's got on them. I don't think he knows what next. I'm not sure he won't burn out while he's at it._

_Good enough. You're recalled. Flight's not coming for you for a few days, but be ready. And you're still coming through loud and clear. If you touch this system again I'll have you shot. That doesn't mean you're out of remedial English._

"I have to go pretty soon," Jesse says. "Work. I don't know when I'll see you again, but I will."

"Work?" He can't make out what's in Genji's voice.

Jesse nods. "I get a lot of different orders." It's probably going to be helping to cover an Overwatch agent's mission. Gabriel likes sending him on those now. Last time, Morrison had to compliment his work to Reyes, who thought it was hilarious.

"Thank you," Genji says softly. "You have been generous with your time, and patient."

"Well. You've been very kind to teach me."

Genji doesn't seem to want to teach him anything else. That's fine, he has given Jesse an awful lot. Jesse still chats with him, visits. Genji shows up when the tiny craft comes by to pick him up. Jesse was just about to say hello to the pilot, a Blackwatch agent who was around on the day he got brought in, but as soon as a stranger shows up, they pretend they've never seen each other before.

"Ah," Genji says. "So you leave now. I am not surprised," and tosses the same string of curses at Jesse, in Japanese. The pilot ruins it. He shuts his mouth and looks back and forth between them slowly, expecting this to be hostile. But he looked first and third at Jesse.  Jesse shrugs. Maybe Genji will take it like a surface-

-Genji grabs his wrist and moves. Jesse flicks a _sit down shut up_ gesture he picked up from Reyes at the pilot, in case someone's about to come fucking rescue him.

"He thought you would take offense," Genji says when they are around two corners, and standing by the cliff. Jesse's a bit worried about the cliff, but Genji doesn't seem to notice it. "He looked at you first, to see how you would take it. Then me to judge my anger. Most people would look first at the angry, shouting man. So he knows you. He knows that what I said was not just a common insult to you." Jesse shrugs. Genji blasts right on by. "I did not know that. Why not? I told you not to use my clan name. You knew we could tell each other such a thing. Why would you never tell me not to speak something that could be-?"

"Taken all personal?" Jesse shrugs. "Okay, I'm a bastard. Who doesn't know that?" This is a totally different tangent than he expected.

"If you thought we were friends, you would have told me to find another insult." McCree sees Genji's point. Must learn to think like that when you grow up among a clan of killers. "So I was your mission. When were you going to kill me? If I became too upset? If I scared a doctor? When did I pass the test?"

Oh. _Oh._ Jesse didn't see a jump to that. But he wasn't the one who was horribly mutilated and left for dead by his own family. "Nah. Agents are busy on base, even me. As for you, you're a new factor here, with trainin' to do things most people don't even think about. I just got a suggestion to hang out with you, get a sense of who you were. Didn't mean to be unfriendly about it, Genji, I got nothin' to complain about how you treated me." After all, when Genji hurt him, it was accidental and he was sorry. After Reyes that's a goddamn luxury.

Genji stands, silent. He's impossible to read when he does that. "Who is your captain?"

"It ain't up to me when you know about that."

"Goodbye, McCree. I will decide if you see me again."

"Bye," McCree says, sheepishly. Genji is already going up the wall and out of sight. McCree takes a more prosaic saunter back to the tiny transport.

**

Jesse's gotten pretty good. Not great, but ready to work. Sparring with him is a great little brain exercise, because Reyes can fight on autopilot and let his brain work on all the problems of the day. He's glad he's back.

Jesse moves in a flurry of attack. Reyes' blocking arm drops limp.

Reyes reacts to that  before he thinks. Useless arm = remove all enemy advantages. Reyes tunes back in while he's lunging to crush Jesse to the mat. He slams Jesse a lot harder than he usually does in practice, and there's an instant pat-pat to his shoulder. (They don't tap out on the ground, not after that little time they practiced in a marsh and Jesse damn near drowned.)

"What was that?" Reyes' nice little meditation is ruined. "Who taught-" Right. Shimada. McCree had spent days with Shimada during his mission. "Why didn't you tell me you learned that?" Jesse shakes his head, still trying to clear it, confused that Reyes is pissed. "I'm in charge of your training, you tell me when you learn new shit. Your report just said 'spent time with.'" 

 "You knew. Ziegler complained. It didn't have anything to do with his assessment for Blackwatch."

"Report this shit to me." Reyes hauls him up. He feels obliquely criticized. Shimada obviously felt Jesse didn't know enough. He's right, but Reyes was saving things that required pinpoint accuracy for when he sent Jesse solo. McCree's thinking will never have much room for elegant combat. He'll kill or die.

Well, he may have more tools now, but it's still up to Reyes to teach him when to use them. "We're starting over. Show me what you know."

"Boss-"

"I know. Dinner was in half an hour. Now it's when we're done."

McCree sighs. He obviously knows how this is going to go. Reyes is going to work on this until Jesse is too exhausted for anything but sleep when they're done. But he puts his hands up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fog shadows hang in the air in three dimensions. This was originally called "Monsoon," for Genji's storm. But it's also Jesse doing his job as an agent, oblique, and Genji searching for what's really there.
> 
> I planned this as a bridge chapter, a slice of Jesse being more competent and past the harshest of Reyes' formative lessons. Broken ribs are an occupational hazard.


	7. Derecho

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A derecho leads the way before a mass of bad weather, but can do more damage than anything that follows.  
> _  
> I don't think this earns tags for dubcon or noncon, but to be safe: trigger warning, it might be evocative. Did you like the early chapters, but aren't sure if you'd like this? The end notes are for you! Please go there before reading.

 

This mission kicks ass. The hotel's lawn is full of happy, dancing bodies. There's a big, flower-covered bar with a patient Omnic staffing it. The hotel itself has its doors wide open so people can get out of the heat. They were in and out all day, looking at the old building (it's so old the doors have actual lock-and-keycard combinations. But it's also got force detectors in the doorframe. Any attempt to kick it in would have hotel staff come, with guns, in less than a minute.) Jesse even has a hat he likes. Maybe he has to wear suit and tie, but the hat almost has a decent brim.

They're on a large, beautiful island. There's a military base nearby with a damn lot of Overwatch staff in it. There's a little bit of local unrest. Criminal enterprises are swirling and human trafficking is booming. There's a wedding. The heir to one crime empire, formerly engaged to the lovely daughter of a local policitian, is somewhere around with some kind of weapon and some kind of plan. Overwatch was even formally asked to have a presence at the wedding. The politician has been bought so many times he's a kind of local crime boss himself. Overwatch said no.

There's another faction, the goddamn hotel owner and its security AI. They're old money, racked up over time from wealthy tourists and smuggling, and they have deep, old ties to the heir. They also have some sort of insane AI that's evolved itself over time. While it's too primitive to review the physical security feeds itself, it is obsessed with running the hotel's cybersecurity to a degree of paranoia a human mind cannot attain. When they tested various items to see what could be brought through its sensors, Jesse could not bring in a calculator. Reyes refused to let them overtly hack it. He is worried about starting a bigger incident, like a hotel sealing all its guests into their rooms at a political wedding. They have a way to temporarily scramble its visual systems, but that's all they can risk. 

The politician's underestimated the hotel, and its owners, as a faction. The heir has a room there. He's had time for the AI to be convinced he should bring a weapon onto the premises. Overwatch said no, Blackwatch said yes. But Blackwatch can't move directly. The hotel owners represent a healthy block to the politician's interests, so if they damage the owners, the politician gets to do what he wants. Giving him free rein is not a Blackwatch interest. 

It's complicated. It's time to be covert. It's time to be stealthy. It's not a good time to be some happy idiot waving a glass of wine and cheering.

Jesse, like everyone around him, waves his glass and cheers. It's kind of like a wedding back home, only he's not related to anyone, so there won't be any stories at the family reunion if he cuts up. The people are... free... with open displays that would be frowned on at most places Jesse's lived, and anyone who wants can come. There's so many people, and so much sound, that Jesse thinks his ears might be ringing.

Jesse is still watching himself. He is not supposed to know anyone here. He does not know, for example, a Jesse McCree. That's some other Jesse, who doesn't wear nice suits and dance at weddings. And he doesn't know a dark and handsome Gabriel Reyes. Captain G - the stranger over there at the other side of the dancing is just one of many in the crowd, and Jesse hasn't gone twenty meters near him and doesn't plan on it. He hasn't even looked at him once. Not that there's anyone to look at, in particular.

Besides, Captain Gabriel Reyes is a taxi just now.

To be specific, he is Cab Three, and by the lines he's exchanging with the taxi dispatch Omnic, he's puttering around on the roads driving guests to the party. The air is filled with chatter, packed to untraceability. There's no way to add an encryped channel without making the hotel's AI shit a brick. So Blackwatch found a daily, boring source of chatter that nobody in their right mind would listen to. Anyone who happened to be an islander with extremely specific awareness would happen to know that Cab Three has been on blocks for the past three years, and that the nice Omnic operator who handles the drivers' jobs has only a few lines. A hotel would not care. The islanders with extremely specific awareness have all been sent on a boat to another island, to visit their families of origin for a few days of paid vacation while... the building's renovated. In the meanwhile, helpful, friendly temporary employees have been provided by the company. The building has been soundproofed. It is currently sealed.

Jesse's not even sure what the role of that stranger over there is. He just knows what he's doing: simple recon to prepare for a nice, boring stakeout. He's got nothing to communicate with, not even his datapad. They could only get one past the AI, and they picked Cab Three.

Jesse's just scanning for the would-be assassin. Jesse's already seen him twice. He's got a room. It's a door away from Jesse's, in fact, and if Jesse hadn't seen hotel security, he'd already have broken in. He's got a disguise, it's a basic half-mask that Jesse already knew like his own face. Jesse doesn't know what kind of weapon he'll use. He knows that the man's planned time to strike is in a few hours. He knows he'll be on the road. And - hello. That's him there, just coming out. He hasn't changed the disguise. 

The dancers are moving in some kind of complicated interset of human chains. The heir steps into one and dances along. Jesse fervently watches for him to get or give something that looks like a weapon, but he's just dancing. He gets shuffled down towards the main opening and allows himself to be spat out. He went out by the main exits, so he's been spotted and is being monitored. Jesse doesn't even need to worry about handing him off. He didn't mind going through the detectors, so they know he's not currently armed. Jesse can leave, go pick his shit up, and get in position to cover bride and groom on the way to the dock.

McCree hands his glass to a lovely lady who runs a hand over his chest and tugs his hair in thanks. He heads for the chain. He gets jostled and tugged in, but the pattern's still a mystery to him and he ends up on the wrong loop. When he's shoved out of the chain by people breaking the pattern to get to the bar, Jesse's now in the damn middle of the lawn, almost behind the bar. There's a decorative railing and bit of raised floor between him and Cab Three.

Shit, shit.

McCree doesn't let it bother him, although he's pretty sure that later, Cab Three will make sure he's bothered. He's equally friendly with the people around him,  trading smiles and a few shouted phrases, taking a glass of wine the Omnic plunks down for him. The Omnic staffing the bar is something to respect up close. It's obviously got more important duties than catering to happy guests. It's even got its head cocked to keep an eye on the security feeds above it, hidden from sight to anyone standing outside its little space. It's a big, shiny, silver-backed model-

Jesse drinks, using that to cover the fact that he damn near swallowed his tongue.

He can see everything reflected in its huge, flat chrome back as it rolls forward to take orders. Out of curiosity, as it bent forward, his eyes caught the screen with the little potted plant, the one between his door and the crime heir's. There's a thin, black line hanging in the door handle. It shows clearly over the "do not disturb" card.

The motherfucker left his key in the lock.

Jesse only gets an instant's view before the Omnic has moved and he just sees the crowd around him, but he's sure of it. The man came out of the room, half-blind with anger and fear, mind on his plan. Everyone's used to scan cards. Everyone's used to having them in their clothes, not even having to remember to put them in a pocket. Everyone's not used to getting key out of locks, especially if they're doing something else out of routine, like planning a murder. So the man turned the key, got distracted by motion or thought, took his hand off it, and there it is. 

The Omnic's sensors have missed the line. Perhaps because it's in the middle of human chaos, more probably because it ignores all doors flagged Do Not Disturb. It may or may not miss Jesse using a key to enter a room that isn't his. It's a gamble. Jesse can't miss his chance. He can't take it without letting someone know he's going. He's not a taxicab. Dispatch can't hear him.

Jesse half-turns. This time when he talks, it's to one person, bright, friendly, with a plan in mind. He can tell Cab Three wants to kill him, but Cab Three is covering it, because Cab Three is doing his damn job, and Cab Three talks to him and laughs uproariously. Which is great, but there's bodies close on either side and they can't actually communicate. The seconds are ticking off. The heir could pat his pocket and realize he misplaced something at any minute. He doesn't even have to come back, he can call the hotel and they'll scurry up and secure it. Cab Three is baring his teeth in a smile and starting to look away.

Jesse commits suicide.

Grabbing the back of C- R- G- Cab Three's neck is easy. Under his fingers is all sun-warmed skin, easy give and bend, because he's that surprised. Jesse says in his ear "got key. Going."

Only he needs a reason for being that close. Heads have turned, people are looking, if he backs off now it's obvious he said something private. Jesse would kiss him, but he knows mortal terror when he feels it. He doesn't want Cab Three running over him and throwing his body into the ocean. But he has to do something.

He doesn't kiss. He bites. Sharp, sudden, on the side of the jaw just below the cheek, just past bristling hair. He sees R- C- G-'s eyes go wide, but he's already letting go and turning away. Cab Three is going to bump into him and throw his body towards the ocean, but how do you even complain about it? "You bit me" sounds like something that he'd get bitched out at over a wrestling match. No problem.

He probably bit a lot harder than he meant. Less than mortal terror is still terror.

He gets about two steps before he hears feet land behind him. Cab Three just jumped the railing into the space he left, before happy partiers could close it up reaching the bar. There's a sharp slap on his ass, open palm, turning into a squeeze. He turns, half wrenching away, and Cab Three is right there. He's not radiating menace, he's radiating cheer and goodwill, but the arm that slides under Jesse's coat and catches him around the ribs is iron. Jesse has just been informed that Cab Three is going along with his cover, surprisingly deft and handsy for a battered old automobile, so he laughs and leans into it. They move into the dance.

Cab Three has been thinking about everything he sees; he always does, not trains of thought, more like an air traffic controller. Jesse's not at all surprised that they get spat out right in front of the hotel doors. That's their in. They can break off here and-

 Reyes pushes his chin up with the side of his hand, (he's still holding his wineglass, not spilled through all that jostling,) and kisses him.

Jesse is lost. It's exactly, exactly what he thought it would be, here in the sunlight and the crowd; taste of alcohol and tobacco. There's laughter and whoops from the crowd around him. There's mixed messages. Reyes' angry hand at his ribcage is hurting him. Reyes's angry mouth is devouring him. Jesse's lost his hat.

Then he gets angry. Reyes doesn't have to step in, Jesse's got this; and he doesn't have to shove himself in pretending, acting.

There's nothing to do with that, but at least it clears his head, and he grabs Cab Three and kisses him back. There's calls around him, laughter, and something that Jesse can't even translate but can tell is "get a room!" Reyes waves his wineglass in acknowledgement of that one, and drags Jesse through the doors. Drags him through the side doors into the little hall. Shoves him against the wall, bodies close. Drags Jesse's collar down and shoves his face by his neck. "Where is it."

Jesse throws his head back in case someone follows. Who knows, everyone is tipsy. He can still hear the party outside. They can say anything; there's no technology that can overcome that roar. He keeps it down anyway. "He left it in the door." 

He can feel Cab Three choking off words. His voice changes, drawl, mumble, accent so thick it takes Jesse a minute to translate. "Cab Three to dispatch. About two minutes away. My tech okay? My camera's rattling." He doesn't look like he's doing anything; Jesse can't tell if he's waiting for a reply or listening. The AI isn't invulnerable, but it will be difficult, and Blackwatch was hoping not to meddle.

"Stairs?" He already knows that's insane. Nobody makes out on the way up the stairs. The Omnic is watching the cameras. The Omnic has undoubtedly seen this about a thousand times. If they do anything different, the Omnic is going to notice something different. A person might not care to observe or think about them. Omnics don't get embarrassed.

"Shut up." Reyes' cheek is raised, reddened, where Jesse bit. Jesse's eyes have adjusted enough to see. Reyes' eyes are dark, furious. He drops his wineglass in the trash. Jesse takes the lead, swinging his weight off the wall and dragging Reyes with him. It's just a show, just a show. He got them into this. He can get them through it.

The elevator is old, slow, and hell. He tries pushing Reyes to side so they're almost on the edge of the shit little camera, which is a mistake. He has pissed Reyes off more than any time before. Any guidance is blowing right up in Jesse's face. Which is how Jesse ends up with his ass perched on the railing and Reyes' body between his knees, trapping him. Gabriel's hands are on his hipbones, hard enough that his squirming is just trying to deal with the pain. It's not even something he'll want to remember later. He thinks that's the point. He can't breathe. He doesn't dare bite Gabriel's tongue. Jesse's face is burning from the rasp of his short beard. Reyes is insane. It was just a stupid cover for- he wasn't trying anything- he didn't mean to -

The door bings. Reyes looks up and pulls him out, still taking his weight. The hallway is empty. Gabriel lets go like a switch was thrown. Jesse recognises he's gotten the message the cameras are fucked, they have a window. Jesse catches himself on the wall. Reyes stalks down the hallway without looking at him. Jesse follows him around the corner and relaxes. That's the key card hanging off the key in the lock.  Nobody in sight. Reyes takes the key and pulls the door shut. It would be awkward to have the heir walk in.

They're in without words, without so much as a glance at each other. The room is laid out just like Jesse's, a little open space, bedroom door, and bathroom door. Reyes checks for surprises while Jesse makes sure the windowshades are down. They pull on gloves, to prevent complications, and start looking. Reyes slides the gun case out from under the bed just as Jesse finds the tripod in the wardrobe. He comes over and kneels down too. Reyes throws the catches open and the lid back.

It's a prototype of a particle rifle. If Jesse were a madman, craving an apocalyptic way to kiss off a bad ex, this is it. It's heavy, ugly, a bad idea put together by crazy folks. He's seen one, never wanted to fire one. It fires a round of energy. It's technically untraceable, because there's nothing fired but heat and raw power, but impossible to use with stealth. The heir shoots this at the bride and groom, they're going to be romantically entwined molecules. 

If it doesn't have some safety precautions, or if the inner workings have any defects, there's a few things that can go wrong with it after a couple of shots, and all that energy is going blow the wrong way in the mother of all backfires. It happens pretty often. There's even a detector sold with it that throws flags and locks the weapon down if the insides aren't right. That wasn't with the early models, but the sellers were trying to move them after the market unexpectedly dried up.

It's been fired already. Maybe twice. The muzzle is black. The detector beside it is battered and chipped. The gun might already be about to blow its wielder to hell. It's the most convenient counterassassination tool Jesse's ever seen. There's an instant of wordless harmony. Reyes pops the cover open on the gun. Jesse concentrates to steady his hands. He picks up the detector and pops the case.

It's harder to break it and make it look right than it is to just break it. The best way involves a microscope and a touch of welding. He has a few tiny tools he was able to stash in his wallet, and that's all. He tries to hide his meddling. The best possible outcome is that the detector gets molecularly shuffled along with the shooter, and any signs he leaves won't matter for shit. The tripod was outside the case, a hint he's not going far. He'll be on the hotel roof. That's fine. The collateral damage probably won't have a body count.

Jesse starts putting everything like it was. Reyes follows with the gun. The case is closed, and they're moving for the door, when Reyes reaches for his ear, smacks Jesse's arm in warning, and moves.

They're both out in the hallway in a rush. The key's back in the lock, and Jesse's getting dragged to the opposite wall. They can just get inside. The AI fervently believes it duty is to ensure the safety of its guests, and their privacy. Reyes can stop. So he struggles. 

Reyes straight-up overpowers him, wrestling him back. Jesse hits the wall so hard stars shimmer behind his eyes. He bites. Reyes ignores it, kissing him like sarcasm, like punishment. The closest he's been to gentle since outside. It hurts more than Gabriel's teeth in the elevator. Reyes' knee slides between his legs, settles in snugly. This close there's no missing Reyes' response, either, Reyes is as confined, uncomfortable, as he is. There's a low little noise that could be approval.

Jesse knows it isn't. He's trapped in the dressy suit, stranger to himself, overheated, oversensitized. Reyes gets his hands under Jesse's armpits, lifting him up and settling him at a better angle, where he doesn't have any goddamn leverage. Jesse slides his hands under Gabriel's jacket. There's a warning squeeze on his shoulders, bruising. He's not supposed to touch.

He can't breathe any air that isn't Gabriel. His own body has already gone with Gabriel's lead, trained by long custom to follow along. Gabriel's just rocking his leg, the friction of layers of clothing doing the work, raw, dirty. A little, vulnerable noise tries to spill out of Jesse's mouth. Reyes consumes it. Gabriel's paying him back for what he wanted, what he dared. Reyes seems to think the cameras are back. That means there's an Omnic watching Jesse being twisted open. Reyes doesn't have to go this far. He doesn't have to do this here.

He hasn't been able to make eye contact since the elevator, but he takes his gaze off Reyes' flushed mouth. Jesse's seen that face in interrogations, sharp, fascinated. It's the look he has when he sees the breaking point. When he's working towards it.

Jesse can't take that, being worked on like an enemy. He caves. Under the jacket, he smacks his palm in a double-tap against Reyes' ribs. He relaxes his back and shoulders and lets Reyes have his weight. Reyes is still crushing him into the wall, but they've been sparring often enough that the reaction to his surrender is automatic. Reyes goes immobile. Which doesn't really help.

" _Uncle_ ," Jesse says into his neck, low, in case someone's gonna come out of a room or around the corner; if he triggers Reyes' arrest mid-mission, he'll be the one going to prison. "I'm humiliated, okay? You can - you can fucking quit."

Reyes' only concession, at first, is to lean back enough that Jesse gasps air. He sheds his jacket, looks around as if he wants somewhere to put it, reaches into Jesse's pocket, checks his room key number, looks around. Jesse's dragged with him as he steps to the door. A slide, a click, and he's through the door and freed. The lights and radio come back on when the door opens, so he's met with brightness and sound. He falls, rolls, scrambles up as Gabriel locks the door.

Gabriel tosses his jacket onto a chair. He's not even looking at Jesse. He's icy calm, leaning against the wall, getting a datapad out of his pocket. They're done. He's reporting in. Jesse shoves his hair straight with his fingers. Since the place is monitored by a security-obsessed AI, he goes and opens the bathroom window. The tiny drone that they use to sweep for bugs takes off from a neighboring room and starts sweeping the apartment. They both wait quietly until it's scanned the place, flown a little loop to show all-clear, and returned to its perch. The window closes softly under Jesse's hand. He doesn't turn.

"No, I didn't bring you in to punish you," Gabriel says like he's reading his mind. "That comes later. But if I ever have to do that again for a cover, I don't want you panicking." Jesse admires the economy that Reyes used taking that decision away. He also knows he won't be discarded. Jesse turns.

Reyes doesn't even look at him now. He's got that set to his eyelids that he usually has when the soldiers are around him are exhausted and he's trying to look unbothered. It means he's controlling his breathing. Which is kind of worse than if were openly breathing as hard as Jesse. It says there's layers going on here. Jesse can't even handle the surface.

He goes into the bathroom and turns on the cold water. Kicks the door shut, strips, steps in. The shower is wide and the water is ice. It hits like a pile of bricks, just what he wants, driving away lust and shame. He stays under it until he's shivering, turns it off, waits, and puts it back on again. It's stinging all his chafes and little burns. It helps. He gets out and looks in the mirror. There's lurid stripes on his shoulders and hips. There's a bite on his shoulder, scraped with his shirt. It's bleeding. When in hell did he get that? Oh, right. The elevator.

He doesn't really want to meet Reyes in a towel right now, so he steps back into his pants and tosses the jacket around his shoulders. The door to his room is closed when he comes out. He wouldn't open it if there were a fire between him and the hallway, which is standard when Reyes shuts a door. He's got a change of clothes in there. He wants it.

Reyes opens the door. His clothes are mostly reordered, but his tie's in his pocket and his collar and cuffs are loose. Studied, Jesse knows, to confirm any impressions. "I leave first," he says. "You'll have to stay here for a few days more. We need to associate you with someone now. There's a business meeting happening one island over. Leave when they do." A muscle in Reyes' jaw jumps. He clenches his fists and relaxes. Starts to walk towards the door. Stops. Jesse can feel him want to leave. He can feel him want to fight. He's drawn to Reyes. Reyes is drawn to violence. No fight between them will ever be fair. "Why didn't you move earlier?"

Jesse blinks. There's silence (except for the radio, the music and shouts beating at the windows, the air conditioner in the next room, the bathroom fan...)

"Why didn't," Reyes repeats, "you move earlier? You came over. You said you had it. I went in with you, because you had it. It was there. You walk by his door. You didn't take it earlier? You lied to me? How did you know staff wouldn't notice it and take it for him? What in hell is going on with you?" Gabriel starts to punch one hand into the other, catches himself. His fingers squeeze. Relax. Jesse stares. That's the most he's ever heard Gabriel Reyes think out loud. Reyes seems to realize it too. He closes down. "Finish what you've got. Then, I'm pulling your duties and dropping your ass in a deep, dark hole, until I forget this mess. Get your head together, and I might get you out."

"Hey," Jesse says. "What happens when you take a silver robot, polish it up real good, and put it under your security monitors? Nobody thought of that, I guess not even you. I sure didn't. That don't mean I didn't notice."

Reyes' expression changes, still unreadable. Jesse's not sure what the shift meant or what it's going to mean, and he's got no energy to figure it out. He's sick of this, sick of Reyes' anger, his power, his unending influence. Playing it cool and distant, or chewing him out, Gabriel Reyes is under his skin. The last ten minutes would have been so much easier if he weren't.

Jesse heads past him into the bedroom. The air conditioner is rattling loud enough to shake the wall. They don't need sound cover, Reyes is paranoid because he got his thoughts all tied up for once. Maybe that's Jesse's fault. Maybe it's not. He smacks the setting to something less annoying and starts getting a change of clothes out.

Reyes has moved. He is now watching him from the door. Jesse ignores him, sheds his jacket. Whatever happened in the hall, they've seen each other naked a thousand times. Reyes can look or not look or go fuck himself, whatever.

"Put the sheets out for room service."

Oh good. Reyes is back. Jesse tosses his belt on the bed. "I know."

Cab Three has left when he looks up again.

Asshole.

It gets late enough for fireworks, and the crowd has gone from happy to drunkenly happy, when the bride and groom hop into the little convertible hovercar. She blows kisses; the groom waves; blossoms of purple and blue spread and settle over the sky.

A blueish flash whites out half the dusk like lightning. People turn to stare at the hotel behind them. Shocked brains are trying to figure out if they're in danger. There might be a panic. Jesse waves his wineglass and cheers. A few scattered people start clapping. Whoops rise. The bride laughs and kisses the groom. The car starts away. Her loving, asshole father beams. Jesse joins the dancing. A smiling, middle aged lady hops into the line beside him and thumps him on the shoulder. Jesse doesn't wince.

Everything's disassembled the next day. The Omnic is back behind the counter. Since the security's now died down to normal, he picks up his datapad and takes it to the beach for review. The sky's darkening with soft gray, and the shore breeze is cool.

Reyes has been fucking with his schedule. His mission's been extended by five days, he's got tickets back to the mainland by boat, and... he frowns. It's bugged, nothing's loading. He checks again. After that his schedule is completely empty. The training duties are gone, the watch postings are gone, the intelligence meetings are gone. Jesse wonders if that means deep, dark hole time. Reyes wouldn't come get him for that, he'd tell him where to go. There's nothing. Just space. Two full weeks of space before his schedule's littered with tasks and notices.

Jesse never gets just space. Much less empty, deliberate weeks of space.

It's a problem.

If he asks Reyes, they're talking about it. If he doesn't ask Reyes, he gets to wonder what kind of hell he'll walk into. And he did the best he could. He should ask Reyes. Without talking about it. That's a real tall order, since Jesse's shoulders and hips are purple-striped with Reyes' bruises. He can still feel the heat of Reyes' anger in his skin. It's like there never was a time before Reyes wrapped Jesse around him. It's like any word goes back to Reyes' teeth in the hotel. Jesse thinks.

Some time later, his message, painstakingly crafted to avoid all possible hints or references:

_?_

The answer, while he's still looking at the screen:

_Vacation. Go._

Jesse almost starts tapping through schedules to see where his shit went. He stops himself. It's been a long time since he hasn't been needed for anything. He starts to write:

_I'm gone_

in acknowledgement, but his fingers stop. Reyes could take that to mean he's actually... gone. He thinks about writing more, but that's just making empty talk. He could write less, but that's just being cryptic for no reason. Reyes spoke, Reyes expects what he said. Done's done. He puts the datapad away.

Once this has been done, no duties for days. The feeling of freedom is disorienting. But it's sweet. The weight of Reyes' expectations, the burden of being his best trained, is off.

A few drops of light summer rain start to fall. The water-pounded sand is different than the wind-scoured desert sand he knows. The raindrops leave the sand covered in perfect little polka dots. The skies open up. It's a cloudburst, it will be over in minutes. He can't see more than a couple of feet. Nobody can see him right now. No sensors could find him on the beach. There's nothing but the sounds of the rain and the surf and the tap-tap-tap-tap of raindrops on on his body. He raises his hands and face to the downpour and lets it wash everything away.

The datapad has a hairline crack. The water gets in. It doesn't work for four days, and then only barely. He doesn't request a new one before he goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things hit a flashpoint, things slide out of hand, things get less comfortable, things get painful, one person is very unhappy. Consent is clearly refused and it stops. Still not comfortable? The next chapter will discuss it, so skip that too. Situations in later chapters will not follow that pattern, and there are no further outright mentions, so you're good to go after that. Sorry about the inconvenience.


	8. Noctilucence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel is human.

Reyes wears blame badly.

If Morrison is an obnoxious optimist who hears what he wants to, Reyes is an arrogant jackass who hates being called out for shit and finds a way to put the fault on someone else. Or so he's heard. That trait's not usually something he has to think about. It's there in the backdrop, in the past, in his mother calling him out for bullshit and shooting down his excuses. It's been there in the best leaders of his past pinning him down and laying out what he'll do to correct his fuckups.

He's past all that. He doesn't think back to it.

But he's been sitting here for half an hour and he hasn't gotten _shit_ done. He keeps blaming Jesse for it, which makes him think about it, which makes him realize he can't. And he can't keep his thoughts on track.

Usually it's simple. He tosses a couple little things to think about out and parts of his brain go fetch, and they come back, and he turns over what they have; it's kind of like his subconscious, only it's just how he thinks in the quiet under the hum of other thoughts... he can't explain it. He just does it. He needs conclusions, he goes and does shit, he gets his conclusions. But when nothing comes back, he's left trying to chase everything down himself.

Start over.

First off: assassination. It's a woman, elderly, politician, seems a decent person on the balance; has to die because of her vote and because she can't be ousted: not McCree.

That was probably where he lost that one. He picks it up. Glances over it. Who speaks Hungarian and won't blink at this? Carter? Carter. It's Carter's now. Carter's philosophical about doing dirty work. He picks up his datapad and taps Carter. Drops it on him.

Next.

Team needs a quick refresher on how to use one of his favorite techniques before a mission. Easy, he's busy, and Mc-

He schedules himself for it and bangs the datapad down on the desk.

A neglected train of thought regarding lunch arrives, putting his hand back on the datapad. He's looking at empty spaces, because he automatically flicked over to McCree's schedule.

His chair hits the wall and he stalks to the gym. Years. He's been tolerating McCree's attention for years. It should be second nature. He should never be this far off balance. He has many agents; McCree might be the one most attuned to him, most in sync. But Reyes is responsible for every one. He has to find a reset. 

He bursts a punching bag. He watches people spar, steps in and corrects. He gets asked for demonstrations, obtains volunteers, provides demonstrations. He feels better, cleaner, afterwards, like burning off some of that energy purged a little doubt with it. He showers and heads out for a long walk, out the back of the building. He nearly falls over Amari, who is sitting with her legs stretched out and her eyes closed. There's a thermos beside her.

"Is this the best spot for meditation?" he growls. He doesn't give Ana commands if he can help it. She's Jack's second. It's a bad habit.

"Gabriel."  She sits up and crosses her legs. "I'm sorry. I was thinking. Tea?"

 He's pretty sure she's here for mistrust or inquiry. Maybe McCree talked to her, and she picked something off him. He should walk away.

He settles down. Maybe she talked to McCree. Maybe he should know what about.

"Sure. Haven't heard from Morrison," he says.

"He's been back... to visit. They're uneasy."

"When are they not?" He rolls his head on his neck. "I've been wearing out my best agents just to get them peace of mind. Is he their teddy bear?" But even here, in the heart of the base, they shouldn't discuss the Switzerland headquarters. So he changes the subject. "What kind of tea?"

She's produced a little collapsing cup from her sleeve. He gets the thermos lid. "Rooibos. I picked it up on travels, but forgot it in my bags and only found it today."

"Thanks." He looks into it. It smells distinctive, different. He sips. He's never really gotten tea, but okay.

"It is different, without him," she says. Then she looks up, wide-eyed. Yeah, Ana's never really been at ease around him since that first mission, where his gun jammed and he had to use improvisation and his bare hands. She saw it like she was close enough to get blood on her clothes. Any kind of annoyed, rumbling noise from him makes her reassess. "Something bothering you?"

 Amari is canny, suspicious, but she's got a kind streak to her and an emotional knack for understanding people, different than his tactical breakdowns. And she won't be surprised to hear he fucked up and hurt someone. And she's safer than anyone else, and not in his chain of command. And Morrison, who would know what to say, who would be safe with this, is in Switzerland, shaking hands and patting backs.

So he lets it out. "I fucked up."

She puts her teacup down. "What's the body count?"

"You made me feel better already. Thanks for the perspective." He sloshes tea at his mouth with a jerk of his hand, wipes it off his beard. 

"No problem," she says, picking up her drink again. There's quiet. Insects buzz in the leaves, the grass whips in the breeze. Reyes relaxes against sun-warmed rocks.

"Do you think you're being too hard on yourself?" she asks.

"No."

There's more silence. Ana isn't pushing, probably because she's afraid of him. He wonders about that. He wonders why she still is, what she sees. What she's really afraid of.

"I don't want to pry," she says. "But I can listen."

He rolls his shoulders. How does he even talk about McCree? McCree is his right hand. McCree's been bound to him by obligations, then by his own acceptance. He dropped McCree in the fire, forged him, pulled him out, he's been wielding him ever since. They've been tied together by blood and victory, loss and survival. McCree's answered every time he calls. McCree damn well should. Gabriel has invested his time, his attention in Jesse more than any other person.

He can't talk about McCree. But what's getting him isn't McCree anyway, at its core. It's all in his own head.

"So you know how you know someone," he says, "and they're always pushing for something? Like, something they can't have, the time's not right, or it's not going to be what they think, or it's not really good for them, or-"

"Gabriel, I'm a mother."

"You know." He nods. He sits. "So one day, they do something... out of the ordinary. It's a slap in the face, it's unexpected. It's exactly what you've been worried they'd do. It gets thrown at you right when you were sure they'd be no trouble at all. When you needed them to cooperate." He sips tea. "So you come down on them, then and there. You're done with their shit, and they're going to know it."

"And it wasn't their fault," she says ruefully. "I know. Fareeha would not sit still and eat at an important dinner, and I was sure she was defying me. She kept wiggling, kicking the table leg." Her sigh whooshes out. "She was allergic to something in the building. The child was getting blisters when I took her aside for discipline. Her poor little face."

He nods. There's a little silence. He's not sure what to say to that. "Sorry."

"I was forgiven," she says. "Parents and children want to forgive each other. I take it your problem is different."

"You know my read on situations," he skates away from the question of what they are to each other, since he's going to have to lock that down again. "I've always got more than one line going when I'm predicting someone. It's why I'm usually right."

She nods. "You're very used to being right."

He puts down the thermos lid. "You fucking with me, Amari?"

"No. I've heard you in planning and debriefing. You're very confident." She sips tea. "I am not saying it's unfounded. I'm saying that it's there, and probably a reason why you committed to the lesson."

He eases back. He didn't spend enough time fighting, didn't get enough out of his system. "I did. Now I have to fix it."

"Is it that bad?" 

_(I'm humiliated, okay?)_

"Yes."

She nods.

"You were expecting that," he says. It comes out more accusing than he means it.

She doesn't take it wrong, either because she's chosen pacifism, or just because she understands him. He's not sure one's better than the other. "You hit harder than any man I know, Gabriel."

Well, she wasn't talking to McCree, because she doesn't seem to know. He rubs his face. "I can't un-hit. We're not even talking right now." He doesn't say _I sent him off_ because Ana would look at the roster to see who was sent off. She will. She will guess. But it will look like any time Jesse's vanished on an errand she's not cleared to know about, and it's not like his other agents have cubbyholes where they're stashed. Gabriel's not confirming anything.

"Nobody can un-hit. Angela pursues that power. A noble goal."

"Good, I'll see if I can get a volunteer signed up for tests. Maybe she'll get something." She blanches slightly, and pours them both more tea. "Thanks. So now I have to figure out how to clear the ledger. What's the smile about?"

"You're very transactional," she says. "It's not a bad thing."

"I give what I get." He's developed ways to deal with the things he doesn't have, the gaps that show on those damned psych tests. The ledger is his most reliable one.

"Maybe it's not something that can be made right, right away," she says.

"Maybe not." He doesn't even want to see McCree right now, himself. "Then what?"

"Apologize," she says softly. "Stop worrying about ledgers. Maybe you will be forgiven with no chance to give payback. Maybe your payment should be deferred anyway, because it might not heal with some words. Set it back somewhere in the back of your mind. Return it, when the time is right."

"I hate unfinished business."

"Life is rarely so neat." He laughs. "Something still bothers you."

And taken this far, accepting what he did as far as he has, he can see it, like a shadow just past a searchlight's beam.

He wouldn't have snapped like that if he hadn't been thinking about it, too. Maybe he did have to put on an act for the Omnic, but...

Maybe he's not above taking an excuse. 

Maybe it wasn't just Jesse's suprise he liked, or the way he settled against Gabriel like it was where he'd always belonged. Maybe he liked the pain around McCree's eyes, harshening his breath, the way McCree sucked Gabriel's tongue in his mouth anyway.

He won't even hint about that. Jesse charms even a grumpy Amari into laughter. If Ana learns the way he chose to drive McCree off of taking chances, knowing so much as a hint of those other two shadows and the things that cluster around them, Amari and Morrison will work to pry Jesse into Morrison's ranks. If they don't go big, and join the other factions trying to have him pushed from command. 

Anyway, when Jesse couldn't take it, he stopped. He stopped. He just can't take back everything that led up to the moment Jesse surrendered. Can't take back Jesse's sincerity. Can't take back the intimacy of both of them hearing it. Can't take those darkly purple lines back (fascinating, striped on McCree's pale skin. Maybe his brain isn't just bringing that up so he'll fix the problem.)

He takes a minute to think. He's tortured before. It's not exactly his routine. For one, he usually gets too much panicked bullshit to easily find the truth. Or the subject doesn't know something for sure, but pretends convincingly to get him to stop. That second one made him fuck up an entire strategy for a region once, and he'll never forget it. But it's one of many tools he has ready. None of it was ever that interesting, just a means to an end. It's a relief. He's still himself. He knows himself. He can control himself.

Ana is still sitting, looking at a flower, her teacup in her hand. He shrugs. "I'm just not used to apologies. Probably going to be shit at it."

Ana makes a vague, sympathetic noise. So she agrees.  

They chat about other things, there's plenty to think about, until the tea is gone. He walks back towards his office, checking his messages. The third one down is saved for last. Then he checks what McCree has to say.

_How many times have I impressed you?_

Gabriel stops.

He's counting up his debts. He's thinking about leaving. 

Gabriel starts walking again. Messages, replies, click together in his head.

 _Not enough_. True like he means it, but not exactly true. _I could use more._ No. He has to trade, it's not worth shit if he doesn't put something up. _Do it once more._ No, they had a deal. _I'm busy, talk later._ McCree knows he's busy.

Three more messages while he's thinking. One is relevant.

_Pick a number between 10 and 50._

 Reyes taps out:

_I am not having this conversation over a datapad._

McCree has to see him face to face. He can fix it, if he sees him. Put it back like it was. Get his priorities back from one agent to the bigger picture. Gabriel puts the datapad away.

**

"Uhhg. Hello?" He prefers it audio only, so it doesn't matter that the datapad lights up the dark room.

"Jesse. I awakened you. I am sorry."

Amari? He sits up. The boarding house has lace windows blowing in through the breeze. "You make the moonlight prettier just talkin'. Glad I didn't sleep through it. You call me anytime."

She laughs. "I didn't know what time zone you were in."

"Oh, back out West, where I belong," he says. "It's pretty early. Saw a rodeo yesterday. There's this Omnic who loves to ride a bronco, only he just came from another rodeo where the horse rolled over on him, so he was a head and a couple of parts strapped to the back of a two-time champ on a crazy horse, whoopin' up a storm. But I better shut up, you wouldn't call if you didn't need somethin'."

"Actually," she says, "I was just wondering how you were doing. I saw your students were moved."

"Then you probably saw my last job ran over the expected time." He stretches. "Just takin' a little breather. Downtime's good, need to recharge now and then."

"True," she agrees. "It has been years since I have swum in the seas at home. Strange things happen to the mind, after too much work."

"Make some time to yourself," he says. "But sorry about the students gettin' dumped on you. I'll be back, and take some of yours so you can go."

"It's all right, Jesse. I am glad to help. Please call me if you ever need anything."

"Thanks, Amari. I know you're there." He frowns as they trade goodbyes. Everything all right back there?

Well, he's awake now. He throws the blankets back. The bruises are still dark enough that he can see them in moonlight, but he knows the edges are greening up. Soon they'll be yellow. Then they'll be gone.

He'll remain, just like his old self.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, updates are coming faster. This thing ate my brain. I need my brain.
> 
> Pharah had a childhood allergy to shellfish. But Ana does not trust Gabriel.


	9. Cumulonimbus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes require solid amounts of evidence to change their minds. 
> 
> Ana Amari knows it will go badly. She has to try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adding two chapters, since this one's short.

When Jack Morrison comes through the door, the light's on. She's there, sitting on his sofa, reading. She looks up slowly. "Welcome back."

"Thanks. Everything all right?" She's not bristling with weapons, so it's no emergency. But she hasn't come to his saferoom uninvited since her husband died.

"Fine. I was thinking." That sounds serious. He settles down on the couch, unzipping his coat and tossing it down. He's pretty tired, but he's awake from the walk through the streets and driving himself back to his hideaway. "He doesn't know his name's not up for consideration."

"Ana-"

She nods. His mind is scrambling. They are in the one safe place to talk. But they can't talk about it.

"You shouldn't be talking about it. You shouldn't be thinking about it. You're not supposed to know."

"I recall." Ana had been sitting in a high-backed chair, daydreaming out the window, when behind her a chief official walked into the room and made a rare, unguarded comment.

"It's for a reason," Morrison goes on.

"I think you should tell him."

"That's one of the reasons. You don't have the responsibility, and you shouldn't have to try to handle it." He knew she would be troubled. He is too, but he can't admit it, it wouldn't be fair to her. There's nothing she can do. He has to sound certain. "Ana, I can't just tell him. He'll want to know how I know. Sometimes you don't let Gabriel Reyes know he's out of the loop. Sometimes you just tell him what's been decided. It's going to hurt him, but it's going to hurt him less."

"I've been reading about the sunk-cost fallacy."

"Ana, I don't care about-"

She rarely interrupts. She seems to think this is the time. "Gabriel Reyes has put decades of his life into making Blackwatch what it is. He has ordered many agents to their deaths. More than you, because of the nature of his work and the nature of his enemies. He cares about very little, but he cares about that."

"I care about that." He spreads his hands.

"The sunk-cost fallacy is where someone has put so much into something, already, that they can't let go when it becomes even more expensive. If they had not paid, they could walk away. But they can't let go of what they've spent, so they will throw whatever they have after it. Even very smart people fall prey to it. Even people who usually aren't caught by logical mistakes." She's getting up now, as he turns away. "Jack, you have to talk to him!"

"He won't forgive me for this. He'll think I cut him out. He does nothing but spy-games bullshit."

"You don't. He'll know you don't."

He shouldn't even have given her that much. "You're trying to influence decisions way above..." his voice falters at the look on her face. This isn't easy for her. His second is smart, she's loyal, and she usually sticks tight by the rules. He plays along. He sits down. He knows by the rapidity that she mirrors him that she's hoping not to blow her chance. "All right. What set this off?"

"I've seen a thousand little things over the years. He and I talked the other day, and..." she hesitates.  

An ugly feeling lands in the pit of Jack's stomach. "He's heard something?"

"No. We had tea. He told me about something that was bothering him."

"What in hell?" He's too relieved to feel confused. That doesn't last. Ana and Gabriel, drinking tea and sharing sad things. Didn't Reyes just get back from a mission? Jack wonders if he got hurt. Maybe he was drugged.

"He wanted to talk to you. He knew you were unable to communicate."

"Okay. That makes a little more sense." Oh. Of course. What kind of problem would Reyes tell Ana about? "He wants to borrow you? He still shouldn't be talking to you first." Kind of dirty, getting her involved before Jack's said yes or no.

"No." Her face is blank and cautious.

"Ana, I swear-"

"He made a mistake and hurt someone. That bothered him."

"He's not a complete psychopath. That's why we're friends. I think you're making this bigger than it is, Ana. He doesn't like it when things go badly, and he doesn't like his own people getting hurt."

"Nobody is in the infimary."

"Okay. That's getting a little freakier."

"He hadn't apologized, so whatever it was, it wasn't a physical injury. But whatever he did bothered him, and badly. I have never seen him like that."

Morrison gets up and paces for a few steps. It is weird. He gets some iced tea and settles down again. "You don't know who?"

"I made a few calls. I don't know where Donna is. Her schedule's been hidden to me, starting earlier this week."

"I know where she is."

"She didn't pick up."

"That's expected. Missions are busy, you know how it is."

"I don't know where Santos is."

"I... wait, no. Santos. I don't know."

"Well, I can't see his schedule. But I haven't been able to see it for weeks. He didn't pick up."

"Yeah, if he's on one of the two I'm thinking, the Overwatch system wouldn't even have let your call through to his datapad. Then you called Katya, who didn't pick up."

"How did you know?"

"Because she's also been on a mission. And I know which one. And you're not cleared, since it's not your job to keep tabs on Blackwatch." He says it as lightly as he can.

"Then I called McCree. He's having a lovely time somewhere in the American west, or midwest, watching Omnics ride horses."

"Doesn't sound injured to me."

"No. I can't recall him going on vacation without everyone already knowing. I think this is important."

His eyes slide shut, pure exasperation. "It's not important that Jesse McCree is watching horses on Omnics, or Omnics on horses, or whatever."

"I asked Reyes if anything else bothered him. He sat for about forty seconds, looking disturbed, before he said he wasn't used to apologizing. Forty seconds of thought, from Gabriel Reyes, for that."

Morrison realizes his nose is wrinkled and his upper lip lifted. "Okay, that is weird." Reyes has thrown some apologies his way over the years. He's rarely seen Reyes looking disturbed. "Was he just saying shit?"

"I don't think so. I think you should tell Gabriel now. I think he has something he hasn't had before."

"Hang on." Morrison waves a hand, trying to back them up even past the whole part where Ana is still trying to horn in on something she's not cleared to know or discuss. She just went completely out of orbit. "Hang on. Jesse McCree? You think Gabriel Reyes is getting all bent out of shape over _Jesse McCree_? And that's why McCree took a vacation?" This is not hanging together. He doesn't think it's that he's tired, now. How long since she had sleep?  

Ana rolls her eyes. "I forgot you are a man who very much likes women."

"I sure as hell didn't forget that," Jack says. "Jesse McCree is a scruffy little punk about half Gabriel's age. He... well, I guess he has been getting more capable." He thinks. "And not little. Fine, he grew up. But the way he talks sounds so... uneducated? I don't know. I just can't see why Gabriel would like that."

"McCree is charming. And they both speak fluent Spanish."

"Ana, stop." He puts a hand to his head. The image of Gabriel and Jesse crooning at each other in Spanish mercifully fades. " _Mierda_."

"My point is," she adjusts, "you wouldn't see why Gabriel was attractive, either."

"Uh, he's fit, he's handsome, he has a nice beard, and he's smart?" Jack feels his nose wrinkle again as he realizes that's (technically) all true of McCree. "Look, never mind. My point is still this: if I tell Gabriel Reyes he isn't being considered for the promotion, after all he's done, after all his strategies and plans we've used, after all his service and sacrifice, and I tell him this because I think he's fallen for Jesse fucking McCree, based on Jesse speaking Spanish and going on vacation, he's going to laugh himself sick and then go apeshit." He's really tired, but he thinks he got it across without rambling too much.

"Sometimes people don't double down if they have something else to go to."

Jack thinks about that. Gabriel is always proud when McCree does well. He thought it was because Jack was wrong about McCree's usefulness, and Gabriel was right. So Gabriel is invested, he knew that. But if a commander and subordinate are involved, that's fraternization. It could look like favoritism and cause issues in the ranks. For all the uncomfortable rumors Reyes racks up, he's never heard anyone accuse Gabriel Reyes of fucking with his entire command like that.

If Reyes really does care, maybe he's not doing anything because he doesn't want to mix his love life with his work. Is that going to replace his work? Hell, no. And what if Ana's not completely off base, but he thinks of Jesse like a son, or something? Jack hasn't caught a whiff of that, but it's as likely as Reyes suddenly deciding to give Jesse flowers, or whatever. He is way too fucking tired for this.

Ana's been quiet while he's been thinking, but finally she continues. "He might take it in disgust, in anger, but he might take it. It's better than waiting to see how he acts after the promotion is done."

Jack jerks to full awakeness again. _What?_ "Amari, first off, the position isn't even empty yet. Second, counting him out doesn't mean it's mine. We're not the only two qualified soldiers. Third, you can think what you want, but don't talk too far ahead of yourself. He's always followed orders. Always."

"You both know that in most ways, he's your equal. That's all." Her hands are tight on her knees.

 Jack drinks tea. God, this is a weird conversation. Amari's put in over a decade of work for him. She's careful, and observant. She's usually right about people. He can't give her a pass on slander and insubordination. But she's told him true things about himself he didn't like to hear. She's got more license to speak her mind than anyone else he commands.

Besides, if people are reading that, maybe Gabe's friends should know. "How long were you guessing he and Jesse... whatever?"

"I don't know. I would expect it to take a long time."

"Yeah, like hell freezing over. Gabriel's not attracted to kids."

"Jesse hasn't been that boy for years. And Gabriel loves himself. Who has he been making Jesse resemble?"

"Amari-" this is a fight he recognizes, from another woman's voice, with a different accent. He takes a deep breath. "I've heard this from Ziegler, you know."

"I'm not saying it hasn't helped him survive. Or that Gabriel is deliberately forcing someone to mirror him. But he was in Gabriel's hands when he was seventeen. The safest way to be around Gabriel Reyes is to be like Gabriel Reyes. I would not be able to do it."

"Well, he didn't try to make me like him!" He bangs his glass down on the table. Defending Reyes is familiar, by now. Sometimes he's offsetting something he knows is true. More often it's this, vague shit and shadows, suspicion and misunderstanding.

"He sees you as his equal," Ana says again. "He always has." 

"You know what it sounds like? It sounds like you had a conversation where he let his guard down. Maybe he was too upset to pick his words like usual. Based off that, you're speculating about his relationships, you're saying he's fraternizing, you're saying he's certain to become insubordinate, you're trying to figure out where his agents are, you're talking about things you were supposed to forget, you're encouraging me to break my trust - Ana, this is bullshit."

She slumps. She's never cried on him, at least not because he was reprimanding her, but he thinks her lashes are glistening. He wants to relent, just enough to give her comfort. He knows she sees a precarious situation. He does too, maybe without all the crazy Jesse McCree bullshit, but he does hate that Gabriel's out of the running. As a commander, Gabriel kicks ass. She's trying to help, she wants the best. But as a leader, he can't give in. "Forgive me, Jack," she says. He can hear her trying to sound like she's not going to cry. "I had to try."

"Okay. You tried. We done?"

She nods.

"You're forgiven. It's forgotten." He's so tired. But he pulls himself up. "Why don't you get back to base. I'll be back when I've had some fucking sleep, since I've been staying awake to listen to all that. Watch yourself. We're not doing this again."

He watches her go. Amari's always been odd about Gabriel. It's fine. Nobody has to trust anyone. They just have to work together. He shuts the door behind her and throws the bolts.


	10. Pyrocumulus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jesse loses, and gains.

There is a burning rafter cracking overhead. Sparks drop. Reyes is alone. He shouldn't be. He glances up, grabs his opponent, slams him into the wall so he'll drop the knife, and swings his body up to deflect the rafter as it falls. He's covered in sweat. His armor is fireproof (sort of) but that doesn't make it heatproof. And since a ricochet grazed a fuel tank, the airfield is half fire. Fire that his team is probably running around in right now, thanks to Harvey's sudden spray of bullshit orders. He roared a couple of commands, but he was busy fighting for his life. He's not even sure what got through.

This is cleanup only from the Blackwatch point of view. The owners of the airfield are the ringleaders of the smuggling operation, and he just trapped their leader under a beam. If he's still alive, which Reyes doubts, there's the burning building to solve that. Reyes has to get out there, reassess, shut Harvey up, and restore order.

The wall's crumpled in the fire to the right, weakened ahead of him. Reyes tips his head back and forth until he's sure of that, then kicks the wall apart at its weakest point and steps out into clear air. Steam and smoke have fouled the visor of the damn semi-fireproof armor. Reyes doesn't take it off until he's further away. Time to -

-stop everything. Rhythmic thumping noise. He swings around, looking. He's fought in the Omnic Crisis. Rhythmic thumping noises are _bad._

The Omnic must have been deployed back when half of the security force was still standing and everything was not at risk of burning down. It's slow as shit. It's got some kind of mortar arrangement on its back. Reyes can see a shitton of tubes and slow, powerful legs, meant to brace it.

"Take cover!" he barks. Thanks to all the rubble lying around, he can start figuring out how to get to it. Meanwhile, he can see something else: a figure in distinctive black armor lying facedown, and another halfway to it. The Omnic has seen both. Reyes will not get a better distraction. He starts his run. The Omnic starts to unfold.

Reyes is tougher than the average human, but when the mortars go off all at once, it blasts dusts and heat in all directions. He staggers, nearly falls. The noise overwhelms the selective ear protection he's wearing. He can see the Omnic's head starting to turn as it scans its surroundings for threats or structural instabilities.

There's no circling a thing with mortars set on its back. Reyes charges. A small cannon on its arm tracks him and fires, but he rolls in time and is up and running before it can adjust. He leaps for its face.

 When he's torn off its head and ripped out as much wiring as he could reach (his usual method is to fire a shotgun into its chest armor, but he doesn't know how much ordinance is still in the damn thing's bowels) he looks around. His soldiers... well, the one's been blown apart. If he hadn't been wearing armor, Reyes wouldn't have known. The other is lying sprawled. Ana seems to think he's still alive. He can see her trying to get healing darts through the gaps in his armor. They're ricocheting in arcs of useless gold.  

"Man down!" Reyes starts running. He skids to a landing by the body. Armor asymmetrical, blood still pulsing from the shoulder, arterial, imminent death. Gold spangled on the ground around him, popping under Reyes' boots. Reyes yanks a pouch open, sterile bandage spilling out. He doesn't bother with trying to pry the battered armor open around the injury, just wads the damn thing over where the blood's coming from. Bleeding semi-controlled, he tears open the catches on the armor plate with his other hand, pulls it open, and rolls his body to the side. Two darts thunk into the man's (male, so it's not Keller,) side before he can even try to speak to Amari. The plate's partly fused with the shoulder plates of the remaining arm, so he strips the shoulder armor out of the way. He might as well give Amari more to aim at. Pale skin, white with shock: not Fuentes, not Li, not Rogers. He grabs the man's wrist and heaves his weight over his shoulder. He thinks he hears a hiss, but it's a detail and he tunes it out. "Amari, walk me out!" All he can see is dust and rubble.

"There's a wall at three o'clock that looks like it fell securely. Run along that towards my position." He can hear her firing, but there are no more darts coming his way. Someone's still alive, he should be doing cleanup. Damn Harvey. "Can you get over that gap to the right? Good. Now move to your left up the bricks." He follows. It's like a training game as she walks him to a more stable part of the airport. He keeps going, towards the area they've already secured. "Medic tent is-"

"I see it." There are people coming his way, but he's faster than them, even hauling a man along, and goes by. "Mercy! _Mercy_!"

"I'm here," says Angela, leaping out of the silver dome of the medic's shelter. "I'm - oh-" She waves her staff. The biotic stream is short-range and, frankly, needs work, but it's strong enough that he thinks it's doing some good. "Here." She moves out of the way. He brings the soldier in and puts him down. There are so many biotic fields around him that he loses the tinnitus he's had since the mortars happened. Medics are clustering; they've had little to work on until now. For some reason the man's arm is slow to get off his shoulder. He has to tug, as gently as he can. And then Mercy's elbowing him aside, supplies in hand. Clamps, tools. Someone else is tugging the helmet off. 

"You stupid motherfucker," says Reyes to Jesse McCree, unsurprised. McCree is not conscious. He's gray. There are people trying to get around him, so he steps away. He keeps a quarter of his attention on their tone. He's busy checking the reports coming in to see what he needs to do. But it looks like they broke the back of the opposition. If they'd had someone shoving the Omnic, so it would arrive on the battlefield with soldiers to cover it, they might have held their little resistance together.

He takes care of his team and fills them in. Then he goes back to see what the prognosis is. "However he got that, it's going to be a security risk." He knows which doctor that is. It's the one he doesn't like to talk to, the one whose name he avoids, the one who helped inject him with the serum and took notes through his delirium. Reyes usually lets Ziegler handle him. "Is the battlefield stable enough to get his other arm? The skin's probably still usable for transplant."

That sounds like something he should check on. Reyes checks. "Is there a problem?"

The man looks at him and starts laughing.

"How did I know," Reyes growls.

The man reaches out and swats him on the armor on his shoulder. He pulls his fingers back and waves them, not because Reyes hit them (he was thinking about snapping them off, actually) but because he touched the surface of Reyes' armor, which is still hot. Reyes looks down. His armored shoulder looks fine-

There's black grit and blood crusted over the Blackwatch symbol. Reyes shoves the man aside and looks down. Jesse's arm is lying flat, palm up. Burned into white flesh, just above his elbow, is the Blackwatch symbol. Part of the bottom didn't sink into skin as far as the rest, and the brand is unevenly completed. But even printed in blood and blisters, it's clear as day.

"Damn it," says Reyes, and reaches for the medic's pads to wipe his shoulder clean.

The man is picking himself up. Reyes already knew he would barely notice it, everyone who helped with the experimental serums got tossed around at some point. "I know you wear it sometimes, but it might interfere with his-"

"You let me worry about that," Reyes snaps. The man's got a point, if Jesse's captured as an agent of Overwatch, the big, funny mark will raise questions. On the other hand, Reyes often wears the Blackwatch and Overwatch symbols both himself, when he's enforcing a message. And it's Jesse's damn arm. He wears synthetic skin on his face, over his tattoos, on missions where he's not supposed to be recognized. What's another patch?

Most importantly, it's Jesse's damn arm. If Jesse wants to waste it, he can tell the medics to get rid of it. Reyes still has work to do.

He's informed when McCree is conscious. To his surprise, he hears of it through a soldier before someone at the hospital bothers to text him. Damned doctors. She's not even one of his. She's just a soldier that seeks his team out for practice when she can.  

"Why'd they tell you?" 

"I asked, while I was there," she says. "I guess they remembered. I hope he's back soon. Captain says I should ask him to spar with me, it's almost as good as fighting you."

"Never mind," says Reyes. Although the feeling that gives him is warm in his chest. He wonders if he should take a little more time to think about his idea, look for problems, see if he thinks differently later. But no. He's already decided it's a good plan, and he's doing it.

 McCree is kind of green, but looks a damn lot better than he did. His arm is across his chest, fingers lying on the empty space at his side. "Boss."

"Welcome back. Next time, move when I tell you to take cover." McCree's gaze goes down to the empty space beside him, then to his whole arm. Curious, Reyes reaches across and hooks his sleeve up. He can see gauze. "You keeping it?"

"Keeping what?"

"Well, you're in for a surprise." McCree grins back in an uncertain way, probably smiling just because he's alive and Reyes is pleased about something. "Let me know what you decide. I like it, it suits you." McCree's grin fades, and he struggles to sit up. Once he's sat up, his fingers twitch once, and he looks uncertain. Reyes realizes the impossibility of taking gauze off the elbow of the only arm he has. "For - hold still." 

The medics have covered it just enough to keep it from getting irritated. Thanks to Ana, McCree had biotics pumping through his blood while the wound was clamped against the brand. It's partly healed, they've cleaned it up a little. It's beautiful. 

"That's what I think it is?" McCree peers. Looks up at his shoulder, although Reyes isn't wearing the armor, now. "What in hell was going on? Were they trying to kill you with flamethrowers?" 

"The building caught fire. I was in it." 

"Thanks for dragging me out." McCree flops back and closes his eyes. "Maybe I should paint the Overwatch symbol on the other arm. Keep Morrison from feeling left out." 

"If he wants one, I'll loan him my armor and a blowtorch." McCree's hair has fallen over his face. Reyes can't read his expression, and nearly reaches towards it. "Anyway, three wounded. One's leaving. Li shattered a couple bones and cracked his spine. He'll walk again, but he's done with us. Retiring. Besides that, we only lost one."

"God damn it." McCree turns his face away, bringing his arm up to cover it.  

"Harvey. My second in command. Just running out by himself. You know why?"

"No. I heard him yelling, but it was different orders than you'd given, and you weren't down."

"He was so damn sure the target was leaving that he was out there, trying to rearrange our position around him, in the middle of the fight. None of my other soldiers joined him. He endangered me, put himself in the open, and put you in danger trying to rescue him. Turns out the target was in the building with me, and is safely ashes. Harvey just wanted the promotion. That's why you lost an arm." Reyes shrugs. "You cry for him, I'll throw you out of that bed."

 "He was good at what he did."

"He was damn good. He was also damn ambitious, and willing to let others pay for that. There was a reason Overwatch wanted to drop him. I took a chance. -you crying for him?"

"Meds are wearing off."

Jesse's probably crying for him. Harvey was demanding, insulting, and freely delegated jobs he hated through the rest of the team. But he also fought side by side with them for years. Reyes accepts the deflection. "So now you've lived longer than two second-in-command picks."

"Got a knack."

"Good. You're promoted."

"Hunh?" Jesse gapes.

"I mean you're my new second. It probably would have been Li, but Li's out. You can start duties once you've gotten a prosthetic. You can start paperwork once you can see straight. Good luck. If you want to make everyone wear the new badge, I'll think about it."

"I, uh, thanks. I'll do everything I can. I'm gonna throw up."

McCree is going to take his idiot one-armed ass right off the bed, rolling around like that. Reyes kicks the trash can to the bed and steps in to grab the back of McCree's hospital gown. If McCree vomits for less than five seconds, he'll still think that was better than Harvey's damn speech.

He should have known Harvey was going to end up a liability back when Overwatch demoted him. He should never have let him in. He should at least have gotten aggressive a year ago, when it was clear that Harvey was chafing to get out from under his command. McCree's success made him optimistic. 

McCree is ready to pass out when he's done. Reyes leaves him and goes to smoke. Well, he's free of Harvey. McCree accepted the promotion, and kept the brand. Reyes can't un-link those, in his mind. In the end, it's like trying to figure out if he branded Jesse, or Blackwatch did; either way, the mark stays.


	11. A Rain of Ash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reyes doesn't do vacations. But he can do working vacations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please pause here and review some pictures of adorable, baby bison. 
> 
> Historical rains of ash (following volcanic explosions, sometimes major) are responsible for wide stretches of what is now fertile farmland. The rains killed the plants there, at the time.

Reyes leans against the trunk of the hovercar, waiting. His datapad is in his pocket. There's only a few people who are able to contact him right now. He's not taking notifications for the rest of his messages, but someone still has eyes on them. Copies are routed through to delegated individuals by previous arrangement or the Blackwatch AI.

There's going to be a gap soon, a reshuffling, the first opening for a possible promotion he's likely to see. There are only a few possible candidates, and all previous plans have been slowed down, in case someone's promoted who will want to... change things up a little. In response to the situation, Blackwatch and Overwatch have become churning, agitated hives of rumors and energy. It's impossible to think there, impossible to get work done. 

So Reyes is taking a little time to get away, and perhaps check into something.

McCree is late. He was expecting that. Locals are milling around, including one in worn jeans and cowboy boots, with his face tucked down to his thick, fur collar. That one has been sauntering closer. Reyes turns his head, not sure of the man's intent.

"Howdy," the man says, tipping his hat. The wind picks up and nearly snatches it off.

"You were just gone to get some food," Reyes says, unimpressed. "How in hell did you get that getup?"

"Garage sale." He tips the hat again, a do-over. The wind does not interfere.

"Food?"

"In the - we taking this?"

Reyes nods.

He was braced for it, and wins, of course, wrestling the door open before McCree's mechanical hand can reach it and throwing himself inside. "No country!"

"Want to yell that louder, city boy? I think the other end of town didn't hear you. I am not spending the whole trip listenin' to your screechy, ancient rock, and that's flat."

That's flat. He's been back for about forty-five minutes and he sounds like- hold it. What did he just say before that?

"AC/DC is not screechy, it's classic," Reyes growls defiantly. "Besides, even if you got the driver's seat you'd have to leave and get the food. Tactical disadvantage. Music is mine."

McCree mutters to himself, but the rental's a lot better pick than the junker they took this far, so he's gone. Reyes waits, mistrustful. McCree might do something desperate. The man opens the door and slides in without any obvious signs of being about to usurp the radio. The smell of food comes with him. "What's the upgrade for? You didn't say anythin'."

"Weather report says there will be snow. I picked a better vehicle for snow. You know, the opposite of you downgrading your clothing. Garage sale," Reyes snorts. "If you have body lice now, don't blame me." He holds a hand out.

"You don't get the kind of town this is. Folks don't have money, but they have pride and soap. Besides, I blend in a lot better'n you." He sheds the jacket before he notices the hand. "Oh, now look who's Mr. Demandin'."

"I haven't turned the music on yet."

McCree wordlessly hands over a hamburger. Reyes flips it over, snagging the edge of the paper between his teeth and tearing it. McCree's mechanical hand darts over, and he steals a ring of onion out of the hamburger.  A bit of ketchup whips out with it and falls on Reyes' pants leg.

"What."

"Oh, no, it'll stain," Jesse mocks. He crunches the onion, wincing. "Phew. Look, this way I ain't gonna smell it on your breath the whole trip."

"Touch my food again, and you're riding in the trunk." Reyes wipes the ketchup up with the side of his finger and licks it. He starts the engine before he takes a bite. It's spicy-sweet, hot, crunchy. Perfect. "Did they have onion rings?" 

Jesse waves the half-eaten onion slice.

"Fried onion rings?"

"Nope."

Reyes backs out of the space and turns them towards the road. "What kind of weak-ass diner doesn't have fried onion rings?"

"One with cheese fries." McCree crunches. "An' straight priorities."

Reyes automatically bumps the radio with his elbow. "Hold on!" Jesse swats it off before two words of a commercial escape. "You're drivin', but I'm eatin'."

Reyes steals another look at the brown leather jacket with its fluffy collar. "Why do you want to blend in? The area where we're going housed a military base for years. Everyone probably still has hand-me-down gear." It's thrown him off, like Jesse's switched from uniform.

"Dunno," Jesse says. "Just feel better in work clothes." He takes a bite of hamburger. Mayo, cheese, pickle, mustard, no ketchup, no onion. Reyes doesn't understand him sometimes.

"I'm wearing work clothes," Reyes says. "I wear them to work. What do you do for a living? Oh. Right. You work for me."

"People don't look too close, they're going to think you're some dumbass tourist on his way to go skiiing. I look like I've got an honest job. Which of us are they goin' to trust more?"

"We don't need their trust. We need them to not drive like assholes. Like this _cabron._ " They are behind a wide, slow hovertruck. "Who taught him how to drive? Why would they do that? Country trash." Reyes takes another bite of hamburger and turns the radio on and scans for anything interesting. Local ads. Country music. Country music. Local news. Country music. Country music. Gospel music. Country music. Country music. Some kind of ad set in a square dance. Country music. Country music. Local ads. Country music. Coun-

The radio clicks off. He finishes the hamburger. "At least take the damn hat off in the car."

"Sure thing, boss." Jesse tosses it in the backseat with a flick of his wrist. It spins distractingly through the air and settles down on the seat. There's a loud, dinging noise. Jesse digs for his datapad.

"I thought I told you to set that shit on mute."

"I did. Left on some emergency tones." Gabriel shuts up while Jesse consults it. "...might not want to try crossin' the mountains today, boss."

"Storm?"

"Storm."

"You think she can't handle it?" Reyes pats the steering semicircle.

"More worried about things like oncoming trucks," Jesse says. "Hoverin' vehicles blow the snow around funny, can make it hard to find the road. Truck coming our way, not sure what's where, is some bad shit on a narrow pass."

"We need answers," Reyes says. There's quiet in response. He picks up a coffee cup. Sips. "McCree."

"What."

"What have I said about adding fucking cream to my coffee? Do I look like a little cow's calf to you?"

"Kinda do look like a cute baby bison, with that fuzzy little hat on. How come that thing stays on in the car?"

Reyes' skin is dark enough that he doesn't flush much, and he doubts McCree can tell. "I keep my hair cut by reg. I need the warmth. Besides, I don't have a hat brim like a fucking eclipse if you want to see out the window."

"Anyway, you done took my coffee, without checking."

"Don't put your damned coffee down on my side."

"You go grabbin' the first thing that comes to hand and shovin' it in your face. It's surprisin' you haven't eaten your gloves yet."

"You said there were fries."

"I said there were cheesy fries, and they're amazin'." Another crunching noise. "Worth tradin' some slimy-ass onion rings."

"You're not supposed to pull the onion rings apart like a cat gutting a mouse. You're supposed to put them in your mouth."

"It's not that liquid cheese that sets up hard after a few minutes, either. It's the little crunchy kind sprinkled right when they come out."

Reyes holds a hand out.

"Oh, look who got all quiet, all the sudden."

Reyes keeps his hand out.   

 "Hang on, now. I want to give you some, but I can't, cause it's a trap."

"How are you going to trap me with cheese fries?"

"You're trappin' me. You said if I touch your food, I'm riding in the trunk. Only I can't give it to you without touchin' it, hunh?"

"Fine. We're starting a food for forgiveness program. No forgiveness means I throw you in a snowbank, as soon as one falls that's big enough. You're starting at a deficit."

"Hand me my coffee?"

Reyes rolls his eyes and hands him the coffee. Jesse places a napkin full of hot fat and carbohydrates in his palm as soon as he's taken the cup. Reyes accepts the trade and samples. "Okay, not bad."

"Told you."

"I'd like to see what they could do with a good recipe."

McCree snorts and drinks his coffee. Silence fills the cab. Reyes gets his coffee and drinks. The mountains ahead are misting with a soft white. He rolls his neck on his shoulders. It feels just like always, reassuring. They're comfortable. This is comfortable. Trading petty squabbling with McCree is comfortable.

There's just a vaster area past that, what they want, what Reyes can give from between the weight of responsibility and the drive of ambition, what he can't do to keep his agent from losing focus, what he shouldn't do to keep his men from losing faith.

He's not surprised McCree seems to be less attuned to his body language, less aware. There's devotion to McCree. And there's restlessness. He's been more and less in love with Reyes for years. Right now, it seems to be less. He doesn't know if that's natural ebb or flow, or just... exhaustion. Starvation. Reyes admits, he has not given him much, not that Jesse would recognize.

_Ingrate._

McCree hits the radio. "I'm thinking. Not deaf." Gabriel gives it five channels of country music and swats it off again with the authority of the one who is driving. McCree checks his datapad. "What's going on?"

"Lookin' for any better emergency notifications on the local news." Snowflakes are starting to whirl and dance around them. "Especially since we have to trust this damn truck to stay on the fuckin' road."

Gabriel takes the hint and slows down to shrink the truck in their windshield and widen the view.

The world outside becomes glowing pearl, then dimmer white.

McCree's hand starts towards the radio, stops at Gabriel's annoyed twitch of his hand. "Can I put the heat on?" 

"Yeah."

The inside of the car gets warm again. Reyes finishes the coffee. The flakes are thick and heavy, settling down majestically. It would be pretty if there were fewer of them, and if he weren't driving. They follow the road. The mountains are steep, winding, rocks keep rising up on either side, once or twice both. The truck slows to a crawl. Once or twice another vehicle comes up behind them, crawls along, and then splits off on some narrow-ass barely-hidden country road. Jesse ventures some thoughts once or twice, but Gabriel is concentrating on holding his temper and staying patient, and grunts in answer.

It's about two hours to sunset before the truck goes half in the ditch, scrapes a rock, veers suddenly to compensate, can't correct with its hoverpads over surfaces of different height, spins, and crashes on its side.

McCree is out of the car before Gabriel's completely stopped it. He climbs up on the truck's side door and wrenches it open. He comes back a few minutes later. He has emergency flashers and some cords in his hands.

"He's fine. Get this, he's drunk."

"He's created a traffic obstacle."

"No shit. Be right back." McCree goes and starts hanging the flashers up from the trees. He  vanishes over the truck again, probably to do the same on the other side. Finally, he's back in sight. He climbs back in, letting cold air in while he dusts snow off his clothes. "We backtracking?"

"No. There's a utility trail. We're stopping on that until the snow settles. Then we're backtracking. You called the locals?"

"Course. He ain't gonna freeze."

"Asking for a demotion, McCree." He backs them down the road and swings into the little cut path. The hovercar bumps and whirs. The trail widens out into a work site, and he lowers the car on one side of it. Turns the engine off. McCree has already laid his seat down and climbed into the backseat. Gabriel puts his seat down and rolls over on his side.

The snow begins to have a noise, a soft hiss. Gabriel looks up. It's thicker and more sleetlike. Shit. They'd still be getting through this if it weren't for the truck. Maybe he should turn them around now. But the idea of trying to find the road in the snow and the fading light strikes him as unnecessary risk. He remembers how narrow some of those stretches were.

He dozes. When he wakes up, he thinks about turning on the engine for warmth. But blasting a hovercar in tall snow and then settling it down again can lead to trouble when it's time to hover out. He checks in the backseat. McCree's scattered his Blackwatch clothes, with the old and new jacket, over himself. He's got a damn nest. Gabriel takes off his jacket, slides across the seat, and burrows in beside him. He tosses the jacket on top of them as a peace offering.

"You're freezin'."

"I'll warm up," Reyes reassures him. McCree makes a long, grumbling noise. Reyes ignores him. They sleep.

He wakes up to light on his face, the smell of McCree and fabric softener. His leg is stiff, his forearm is complaining, his fingers ache, and his spine is letting him know a lot of different points are angry. He opens his eyes.

"Mornin', sunshine."

He blinks. "That piece of shit still in the way?"

"Don't think so. Heard big vehicles going by. You were out, didn't even stir. Anyway, there was a lot of other noises, but there wasn't enough beepin' for them all to have turned around again." 

"You could have-" he realizes why his hand hurts as he starts to get up and Jesse's shirt  tugs with him. He's got Jesse's collar clenched in a fist.

"I tried to get up and you grabbed me. Figured you thought it was too cold."

"Probably thought you were trying to pitch my ass on the floor." Reyes lets go, rolling his shoulders, trying to get the blood flowing.

McCree's tone changes. "What's this about?"

Reyes looks stern. Jesse rolls his eyes. But they have a "no discussing business in rental vehicles" rule for a reason. Reyes climbs out of the car and goes to piss. He can hear Jesse heading off in another direction.

The morning is fucking beautiful. There's just enough clouds to keep the snow from being painfully bright, but the sun glitters white over a glistening, sculpted landscape. The fresh snowfall is still light and fluffy. Everything is soft and elegant. He takes care of what he needs to and just walks, looking. Snow crunches underfoot. He's leaving a trail of footprints in the snow. He stops over a long, open slope. There's no vehicles in sight, nothing moving for miles. The thick blanket of ice and air swallows all sound but the wind in the mountains.

Eventually, he hears the snow packing under new feet. "Boss?" McCree asks quietly.

"Yeah?"

"This can't be too important, or else you'd have turned around and found another way. But it's so important I couldn't go on-"

"Overwatch can't have you right now." He turns. Jesse is framed between two snowy pines. He's got his Blackwatch jacket around his neck like a scarf. He doesn't speak a word. Jesse's expression doesn't say it. But his body language starts to, before he stops himself. "Don't give me shit," Reyes goes on. His voice sounds a little too angry, even to himself, and he wrestles it under control. "You're Blackwatch first. Don't let them run that down."

"Both are the hooves on the same donkey," Jesse says, moodily knocking a plume of snow off a branch. "Overwatch can't move if Blackwatch plunks itself down, and then where's the donkey gonna go?"

"I don't need simplified barnyard metaphors," Reyes says. "I know we're equal, but we're not being treated like it. Overwatch is getting the lion's share of the glory, Blackwatch is forgotten. Yes, that's partly how we've chosen it. But now, it's taking the strength out of the partnership."

Jesse thinks about this. "We've got infightin' of our own," he says. "Maybe that's makin' us look like we're not much good anyway." 

"I don't appoint all the promotions, McCree. There's a limited amount I can do at the rank I have right now. One thing I can do is remind them of the value of my agents, and the value of their time. So this once, when they came to me on short notice, and said they were sorry but they were sure I could oblige by sending you over indefinitely, I denied it. I know you wanted to go. You can't. Bad timing."

 "Have you talked to Morrison about this?"

"Morrison?" his voice climbs again, and he gives up, switches to Spanish, and lets Jesse know what Reyes thinks about cowboys and stupid bastards. McCree takes it with a seriousness that calms him down, because it means Jesse truly doesn't know. "Morrison thinks I'm a good friend. It doesn't mean he values my organization. He doesn't respect Blackwatch, and he doesn't-" Reyes bites it off. Command issues shouldn't be shared too far with underlings. Even his own second. "If Morrison were in charge of Blackwatch, how many missions would you have run this last year?"

Jesse actually starts putting fingers up to himself.

"Are those all Overwatch?"

Jesse nods and quits counting, point taken.

"That little sabotage trip? No. Making sure the ambassador was very, very late to his bad idea? No. Making sure that other gentleman is still late? Forget it. Were those worth your time? Were they worth the weight?" He might not mind killing that much, but he knows Jesse still does. "If Morrison has his way, every one of my agents would get pure soldier's training. Then he'd call me when he saw an enemy, and we'd all charge right in its face."

 "The UN is putting some backing behind him."

"I noticed. They're crawling all over us." Reyes shrugs. "He makes them feel good about themselves. Makes them feel safe."

"You don't think he can keep them safe?"

"He doesn't do surgical. He has one setting: courageous charge. Look at it this way. Overwatch is the shield, Blackwatch is the sword. He's good at protecting. He's good in his role. But I'm the one that does subtle, I'm the one that thinks in layers, I'm the one that cuts."

Jesse flexes his mechanical hand. It's an absent gesture, just practice, keeping it moving in the cold.

"Well?"

"Yeah, what you do always turns out to be a layered plan. You need two reasons before you shit."

Reyes blinks, thrown off his momentum. McCree's face is straight enough for that to be an honest assessment. It's also ludicrous enough to settle the last of his anger. Jesse walks up, and they stand side by side, staring down the slope.

"You're my second in command," Reyes says finally. "Asking to borrow you right away, like I couldn't have anything important, is a fucking insult."

"So you're fighting back by drivin' around eatin' hamburgers."

"We'll get where we need to go."

"Least now I know we can stop for breakfast. I could eat a bear."

Reyes lets out a slow breath, filling the air like smoke. He still has McCree's faith in him. He wondered. "Let's go."

He syncs up his non-business datapad with the car as they clear the snow off, just to play "Hell's Bells."

"We'd better not get in. It's makin' a funny noise, I think it's broke."

**

They make good time. They're in the hotel lobby by evening. There's a room, two beds, good enough. By long habit, Jesse checks them in. Reyes takes the suitcases to the window, out of the way of an easy drop of a tag into a pocket.

He notices the man who comes in. Jesse's probably aware that he's there, but Reyes doubts he's looked yet. The man is tall, skin about four shades darker than Gabriel's. He's wearing jeans and flannel and his hat's tipped back on his short crown of curls, showing his face. He's handsome, his eyes are kind - humble sun farmer, Reyes is sure, stopping over on a business trip into town now that winter's peace has covered his fields. Salt of the earth type. His clothes are plain and worn, but clean.

He's also checking out Jesse. Reyes has vague suspicions at first, but watches the man's gaze settle on Jesse's ass. Second time, now, probably bolder since Jesse hasn't turned around yet. Reyes thinks he'll have the nerve to come up and talk when Jesse's done talking to the girl at the counter. McCree knows the mission isn't pressing, he's not going to focus on it first. He might want to chat a bit with a local. He'll like this one, Reyes suspects. Be curious how much they have in common. They'll chat. Laugh. Maybe go walk outside. Eventually, someone will invite someone for drinks.

Reyes could just stand back and let it happen. It's Jesse's personal life, he-

His feet are already moving, so he lets them. Crosses to Jesse, hooks an arm over his shoulders, bumps Jesse's temple with his hat. "You going slow enough?"

Jesse doesn't get it, of course. Has no clue. But lets him in anyway, accepting him as easily as Gabriel knew he would. "Not my fault. The little lady's technology don't care much for the weather."

The little lady, who is an adolescent, giggles. "It'll go through! Just give it a bit longer."

"Any year now." Gabriel gives Jesse a clap on the shoulder. The bell jingles behind him, and there's a draft around his ankles. Gabriel goes to get the suitcases. The nice sun farmer has gone, probably down the street to the diner. He and Jesse have already eaten, so there's no chance of the two bumping into each other. Aw. Too bad.  

He doesn't often second-guess himself, but this is it. Maybe he should just find a way to let Jesse go. He knows what they want, in the long run, doesn't mesh. Jesse will deny it, but Jesse wants a ring, Jesse wants a... settled life. Gabriel wants to take Blackwatch to its fullest potential, with McCree at his side. In the end, perhaps sooner now that there's only a few qualified candidates, he wants to bring Blackwatch and Overwatch into one, and run them both. It surprises him that McCree's hung on this long, waiting. He should never have offered hope. He should never have let Jesse be aware that he had any interest. Damn that hotel. 

He remembers waking up to find his fist clutching Jesse's shirt, keeping him close by force.

It's his own fault.

He doesn't want Jesse McCree to go. But all his lines of thought are coming back with the same answer. Jesse will find someone warm, who loves him in the same open-hearted way, who doesn't have the weight of responsibility and secrecy. No matter what Gabriel piles on top of everything he's given, it won't be enough.

"Daydreamin'?" Jesse takes a suitcase. "We weren't there so long you're asleep on your feet." He takes another look at Gabriel's face. "You all right, boss?"

"Fine."

Later he lies awake, listening to McCree breathe. He can make out the drape of the blanket over his body in the streetlight. He itches to go over. McCree would be warm, sleepy, but he'd wake up. Gabriel doesn't know if he'd pull him down or make room. He doesn't know. His brain gets hung between the two. He doesn't know if in morning light, McCree would wake up and decide it wasn't enough. Or if he'd mold himself to Gabriel's wishes one more time.

He doesn't go over. They've been safe in a holding pattern, for all this time, and now with Blackwatch trying to sift from his grasp, with his superiors in rank toying with the direction of Overwatch, with uncertainty about the future and who's going to be able to choose the path, he's afraid to break it.   

 _I'm there in the way he scans every space he enters,_ he thinks. _I'm in his tendons as he blocks and attacks. When he's evening his breath through the adrenaline, that's my rhythm. When he plans to fight back, those are my pieces he puts together. I'm his survival. No one can take that from me. Not even him, grateful or ungrateful._

It's sweetness to his pride. It's what he can take, so he takes it. He lies still. He does not sleep. Time pours by.

He hears McCree leave in the morning. He comes back with coffee and muffins. They get back in the car. Since Reyes slept badly, he sleeps on the drive. He wakes up to country music, played low. McCree doesn't say anything when he sits up. They must be there.  

The old base is crumbling. It's not as cold as the mountains, but there's a snap to the air. Dust and the occasional leaf skeleton or tumbleweed sift through the debris. Reyes doesn't take a second look. He knows where the hidden floor is, and he goes. McCree goes with him, grit crunching under their feet. Reyes waves his wrist in front of the concealed scanner. The floor gapes. They descend. The floor closes behind them. He can hear Jesse getting a light from a pocket.

"Identification," a pleasantly modulated voice says. He has no doubt they're being scanned several different ways.

"Blackwatch, Captain Gabriel Reyes."

"Blackwatch, Agent Jesse McCree," says Jesse.

"Identification of Blackwatch verified. Overwatch agent necessary to proceed."

"Overwatch, Agent Jesse McCree," Jesse says. Gabriel can't be sure what the movement he hears is, but he's pretty sure McCree just tipped the goddamn hat.

"Identification verified. Access provided to Overwatch." The lights come up, showing the same narrow hallway, with the floor at the ending folding down and back and the walls sliding open. They exchange glances. Reyes leads the way.

Downstairs, there's blackness down the corridor. It tells Reyes that this facility was provided by someone higher up the chain of command, someone who directs both arms of his organization, and he doesn't go further. He follows the lights. They lead him through two glass doors marked with gold lines spread like a Valkyrie suit's wings. There's a long, long room with blackness to the right. There's a golden gleam somewhere in there, but it seems to be behind some kind of dark, shifting veil.

"Computer," Reyes says. "Please provide an explanation suitable to my level of-"

"No protocols exist to block the leader of any agency from project data. However, Agent McCree is not a leader of any agency."

"He's cleared by me." 

"Here is the available summary, suited to your level of expertise. My label is 'Metis.' This is project NIKE, creation of Overwatch Agent Angela Ziegler. It is a continuation of previous biotics research."

"Ziegler?"

"Hey," McCree cuts in, "I really like your black'n'white theme in here, but I can't see a goddamn thing. Can we have some more lights?" 

"Visible light spectrum has been observed to annoy the subject," Metis says. There's a series of loud clicking noises from one of the nearby machines. It's part of a computer, possibly part of Metis. The clicks are erratic, and don't fit with the rest of the mechanical hums in the air.

Gabriel puts a hand up to the glass and leans in. That gold light looks familiar, but it also looks like the veil is moving -

The darkness is coalescing against the glass in the shape of his hand. He lifts his hand. The darker shadow puffs into thinness, then empty space.

So he puts his hand to the glass again. "Subject has attained sufficient mass for visibility. Subject interaction with shadow observed," Metis says as the darkness swells. It seems to be mirroring Reyes' hand, not just in outline, but in three dimensions.  A wrist is forming into the unseen. "Please do not tap on the glass."

"Right," Reyes says, taking his hand away. The mirror hand lingers, then drifts apart. "What happens if the subject is annoyed?"

A light flicks on at the end of the room. Wisps of black clear the way. There's a cow's skull lying on the floor there, scattered bones behind it.

"Never mind."

The light flicks off again.

"Ziegler is making self-directed, airborne, flesh-eating darkness?" Jesse is horrified. Gabriel is also stunned, but silent. " _Ziegler_?"

"Misapprehension detected," Metis says politely. "Assessing answer fitting Agent's grasp of technology. Subject appeared to be missing requirement to begin repairs, and so subject entered an error state and began to break down organic matter. It is theorized that subject was attempting to gather material. Experiments were then halted for subject replication to attain sufficient mass. However, visible light can increase erratic behavior in subject, and can increase the rate at which subject breaks down. Note: Angela Ziegler has not witnessed the physical appearance of subject. It has been recorded and prepared for her observation."  

"It likes the staff's light?"

"Misapprehension detected," Metis says. "Subject does not like or dislike. The condition of darkness is required to produce subject. Dr. Ziegler has provided the machine involved in the creation of subject that provides energy for subject to absorb before retreating to darkness for self-reproduction. Subject has been self-reproducing for two years. Two years remain before tests resume."

"She does have a self-limiting factor to them?" Reyes asks.

"Captain is correct. Subject will begin to break down at the same rate of production once sufficient mass exists." Reyes would love to know how it's so sure.

"Is the glass all that's keeping it in?" McCree wants to know. Now that he's said it, Reyes wants to know.

"Subject is severely impaired by atmospheric density. The glass is keeping the air pressure in subject's enclosure lower than outside. This assists subject to move and function."

"What's the purpose of..." Reyes can't even figure out how to phrase his sentence. "What in hell is subject?"

"Subject appears to be an energy related to biotic technology. Subject is currently not named. Subject appears to be related to the chemistry of living things in a way currently not penetrable by science. Suggested name: vitalics." The computer's cadence shifts as if it were ending an ad. "This title is a nickname pending further research."

"Hang on a minute, darlin'," said Jesse. "First you say it's made of mass. Now you're sayin' it's an energy. You're confusin' me."

"Misap-" Metis pauses. "Metis has oversimplified based on expected grasp of scientific theory. Please recall the physical state of biotics. Under correct circumstances, biotics behaves as a liquid, and can be administered directly into the bloodstream. Under correct circumstances, vitalics behaves in a manner similar to a gas."

Reyes adjusts to that. "What's the purpose that her biotics alone can't accomplish?" He already has an idea, but it's a crazy idea.

"Subject is, potentially, capable of extensive cellular repair necessary for the resumption of consciousness in patients with interrupted vital signs."

Fuck, he hates being right.

"If," Jesse says, "you get the part right where it don't eat the patient. How do you know you'll ever get the part right where it don't eat the patient?"

"Testing is still on hold pending further development. However, before the bovine incident, subject behaved exactly as predicted with single-celled organisms, fungi, birds, reptiles, and a previously unidentified small mammal found on the highway. This was later classified as an armadillo."

"Does Morrison know she's doing this?"

There's a clicking noise, and the robotic voice stutters. "Me-Me-Me-Me-" The lights dim, and strengthen. "Metis cannot speculate," the computer answers. "For security reasons regarding the safeguarding of project NIKE, Metis has no connections to the outside world. Metis receives updates when Dr. Ziegler arrives, and no more frequently."

"What happens if she dies?"

Another series of clicks. A pause. "Metis cannot speculate."  

"The world's safe from this shit, right? Like, if you were to get a major hardware issue or somethin'? Cause I'm thinkin' about hittin' some panic buttons."

"Containment procedures for subject are simple. Subject's behavior is predictable. Metis has calculated possible scenarios involving subject's release. Failsafe deployment has been ensured regardless of Metis' state of function."

 Reyes clears his throat. "Thank you. You've been very helpful." He jerks his head. Jesse follows.

"What the shit?" Jesse asks when they're in open air again. The sky's gone gray. Snowflakes are drifting down, tiny and slow. "What in the _shit_?"

"Never mind."

"She's gonna get herself eaten by a black cloud."

"Never mind."

"I can't never mind-"

"McCree."

"Sorry. It's that Angela Ziegler's gonna get herself eaten by a black cloud."

"That's her problem," Reyes spits. "It's not like she can transport it outside the lab."

"Why would she hide that from Blackwatch?"

"She's afraid I'd feed people to a black cloud." Reyes notices he is clenching and unclenching his fists. He snorts. "Well. We have our answer."

"Are you going to ask her?"

"No. Angela lied to me."

"What?"

"How do you think I know this was here? Angela said something was, years back. A little while ago, she looked startled when I talked about it, and denied it."

"Maybe-"

"I know." For the rest of them, a cover story is something they adeptly switch on and off depending on company. People who aren't used to them get all flustered and maintain them around everyone. "She's had time to think about it."

"Maybe she forgot, since she's so busy."

"Maybe." Not likely, but yes, maybe, Angela never reconsidered her hasty denial. "I've worked with Angela for years. If she wants to feed herself to a black cloud for the good of humanity, that's what she'll do. If she truly doesn't want me to know something, confronting her won't help. She's as bad as Morrison when she thinks a plan will end well." There's silence as they walk. "I know about her project. That's good enough. I have plenty of time to ask her about it, if I change my mind."

"What do you want from me?"

Reyes looks over. "Forget about it, for now. I'll keep turning it over, let you know if I get a plan. But don't forget: Overwatch is actively keeping secrets from Blackwatch."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still haven't tagged this with Ziegler as a character, because she's had a blink-and-you'll-miss-it actual appearance, the rest is just her existence known. But damn, she's got a presence.
> 
> It is my secret theory that McCree learned to add cream to his coffee back at Route 66, just so he could drink it, and now prefers it that way. But around anyone but a trusted few, he drinks it black.


	12. The Calm In the Eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel gives.

The sun's heat is harsh on his face. His metal hand is lying between him and the security window, a helpful finger casting a bar of shadow over his eyes. He flattens his hand. The light stings his eyes, but he needs some clarity. He's still crashing down through aftershocks and afterglow, Gabriel is still there, nipping at his shoulder, hands on his ribs. It smells like him, them, sweat, sex. Rugburns and scrapes and bites are reporting in, just letting him know they'll be around. It all matches the sinking knowledge that something's off. It's everything he wanted, Gabriel half-draped over him, Jesse exhausted and Gabriel the next best thing. But it isn't quite right.

"You're thinking again." Reyes' breathing has steadied already. Jesse's is still staccato.

That's an accusation? He second-guesses his instinct. It's always been distracting to have Reyes' hands on him, over clothes, even over a coat. It's worse when he's got cool air and hot sun reminding him all his skin is exposed.

"Man has a right to think, when he's just got hit by a train," he answers with half his mind on it. Now that he's thinking about it, the way Reyes set all this up is planned-out, clinical? Is that the word? It's more a word for that creepy asshole who works with Ziegler, but maybe. He assigned the duties days in advance, set everyone on tasks that took them far from this floor, ordered McCree up and sent him to the room with the view of the sky and the bed. "You don't go easier on me, we're gonna need biotics. Only one of us is a super soldier."

"Haven't gone easy on you before. I'm not starting now." Reyes kisses a thin trail of blood to its source. His lips linger there. "Better? See? You can take it."

Jesse had just gone up and waited. Hadn't thought twice. Not even when Reyes stepped in, closed the door, leaned against it, just looking at him. Then he'd pulled his shirt off, swung it down, let it fall. Lifted one boot to work on the laces with both hands. He'd glanced up to see Jesse stock-still and confused and given a tiny little jerk of his head: _come here_. Jesse had moved without a thought. Now that Jesse thinks about it, he's relieved Gabriel didn't actually snap his fingers.

He'd have gone to him just as fast, just the same.

"Your ears went red," Gabriel smirks in his ear. "Why?"

"Why didn't we do this before?" McCree answers a question with a question. 

Gabriel snorts. "You know about morale, cohesion, professionalism." Gabriel's hands on him are moving, rubbing, finding  that little knot where McCree's shoulder locks against the weight of his mechanical arm when he's stressed. Jesse's been trying to keep the pressure off Gabriel so he can collect himself. So he's been stressed. Both hands move to the same place, both thumbs push, and McCree melts. Gabriel caring about his comfort, touching him, is always potent.

Reyes isn't even answering yet. He knows it, and he knows he has to think. Gabriel nips his ear. McCree clenches his metal fist. Reyes sees it, shifts his hands, presses again. McCree knows a lost battle when he feels it and goes limp. Gabriel continues as he pleases, strong hands working sore muscles until McCree moans.  

He takes a moment to just soak it in. Which turns out to work for both of them, because when he's more relaxed, he can push it. "Why now?"

"You know about morale, cohesion, professionalism," Gabriel says, like Jesse's been interrupting. "The rest of them have forgotten. They think I'm getting so interested in Overwatch that I don't care about Blackwatch, and they've been busy taking it into little pieces for their own." He huffs. "I'm not too distracted to see it." Gabriel's hands flatten on McCree's skin, deliberately, as if he's worried he'll hurt him in anger.

"Crazy as a kicked beehive," McCree admits. "Sometimes they work on pullin' me in, sometimes they work on pushin' me out. Rest of the time, they're sabotagin' me."

"I know," says Reyes in his ear, cold as a fall through ice. "There will be a reckoning for every one of them." Reyes has gotten much more alarming after the promotion. It's why Jesse hasn't rolled over to look at his face since Reyes flattened him in a sated sprawl.

Jesse decides this is really about the promotion. It has to be, because everything is. It knocked the more dangerous parts of Reyes clear off their hitching post. He's paying less attention to keeping his agents in line, he's even let the factions jostle loose of their little pens. Gabriel has switched focus to something else, something he thinks is bigger.

Not that his focus has gone off McCree much. He's been there every time Jesse's talked to Morrison, been at his side whenever he's gone near anyone from Overwatch. Reyes, the most casually manipulative sonofabitch that McCree's ever seen pry information out of prisoners by setting them on each other. Reyes, who knows him better than anyone else. That Reyes has been focused on him around Jack Morrison. Jesse has been innocuous and circum-fucking-spect in his _breathing_.

He realizes he's gotten a damn big hint, too: Gabriel Reyes ordered him up here. So he expects to keep on giving orders after this. It's probably not about a united front against Reyes' would-be usurpers. It's definitely not about a more equal partnership. Reyes' hands are still moving on him, but McCree knows Reyes pretty damn well, too, and knows how he handles his weapons when he's caring for them. Jesse's being calmed down like Reyes would vent off an overcharged particle cannon, worked back to a level where he'll be useful.

So Gabriel looked at Jesse's defenses. Then he planned and deployed overkill. Jesse's first to admit it worked, lying naked with Gabriel's body against his. But the fact that Reyes went nuclear is a serious warning and he can't stop thinking just because Reyes' hand is firmly running down his spine. Gabriel digs in his thumbnail suddenly, in the curve right above his ass, until McCree arranges his hips in a way that suits Gabriel better. He shifts, draping his body more over McCree's. Jesse's train of thought goes over a cliff. Gabriel's hand strokes from Jesse's shoulder down his arm.

"I've always liked this," he says into McCree's ear when his hand crosses Jesse's inner elbow. Jesse turns his head to look down at Gabriel's tan fingers stroking the Blackwatch brand. "Been wanting to finish it." The bottom part of the circle, already imperfect, has faded more with time.

"You know how to leave a mark," McCree answers. Truest thing he's ever said about Gabriel. (Besides the "tricky bastard" and "conniving asshole" things.)

"You like that, Jesse?"

"I like you sayin' my name," McCree dodges to save his hide. He'll take marks, cuts, or burns if Gabriel wants him to, but he won't take them because Gabriel thinks he wants them. He pushes the subject away. "Why'd you chase out Mercado?" And in hindsight, isn't that sad, how hard he fell for the Filipino and his dusky skin and his dark eyes. Reyes went and gave him a type, along with everything else he's molded in McCree.

Reyes' little laugh settles in his stomach. That's Reyes' rare laugh, for when Jesse's just called him out in a way he can't be punished for. "You were both getting too attached. I wanted a cohesive unit. I had to split him off." He'd denied it at the time, Jesse remembers well. Jesse had believed him. Motherfucker. He's still lying. If it was about unit cohesion, he'd have laid out his decision and left it. But this isn't really about Mercado, so Jesse puts it aside for later. (It will bother him for years, a hell of second guesses.)  

"And this is what, now?" He reaches back. Gabriel accepts the hand on his hip. There's a little peppering of shrapnel scars under Jesse's thumb. Jesse saw it gleaming, still fresh, when the team was showering after the mission. It's healed to invisibility. He still knows it like it was left on him.

"Times have changed." Gabriel's hand slides over his chest. "You're mature, more capable."

Times changed after the promotion, after Gabriel got quiet and hard-eyed. After the change in the air, Gabriel suddenly pulled Jesse in and gave him everything he'd wanted. The word Jesse had been hunting was clear now: tactical. He's split between paying attention to Gabriel, just Gabriel, and figuring this out. Jesse runs his hand over Gabriel's and rolls his weight more firmly into him. Gabriel accepts him in a comfortable meld. Yes, yes, this.

But why now?

"What are you thinking about?" Gabriel asks again, more softly.

Jesse keeps his real question to himself, keeps rubbing a small circle on Gabriel's thigh. But Gabriel knows he's no fool. If Gabriel's trying to use him, and Gabriel thinks he's getting wise, Gabriel will go all in. One way or another, Jesse will never come up again. Jesse fishes up a red herring and tosses it. "How'd you know I was waiting for you?" Success, with a side of mockery: Gabriel laughs, a deep belly laugh, into his ear. Jesse takes his hand off Gabriel because he needs to elbow him. When it finally dies down, Jesse adds, "I've gotten a lot more subtle over the years."

"Subtle." Gabriel snorts and is off again. Jesse elbows him harder. "Keep it up, _vaquero_ , I'll tie you up when I have to." The casual threat sends a wave of heat over Jesse's skin. He knows Gabriel can see his ears tint again. Dammit. He hopes he's not going to end up hogtied. He puts his hand right back where it was. Gabriel rumbles approval and traces his fingers lightly down Jesse's belly, stopping just before Jesse loses incentive to talk anymore. "You don't lose poker to me because of your face. I win your money off your body language. How many times have we showered together? How many subzero sleeping bags have we shared? How many practice spars?" His fingertips lift, and his hand comes down flat, a startling slap, on Jesse's lower belly. Jesse twitches full-body against Gabriel. "Are you fucking kidding me, McCree?"

"What are you thinking about?" Jesse throws back at him. He can't sound as aggressive as he wants with Reyes' hand running back up his chest.    

"Thinking your skin looks good like this." Reyes drags a finger from bruise to scrape to hickey. "Don't forget and roll your sleeves up. At least you always wear those damned bandanas on your neck." He bites McCree's shoulder suddenly, dragging his teeth to feel the muscle.

It sounds real, might be, but it's too playful to be believed. Skepticism lets Jesse's brain settle in and tick over the pieces it's got. He's missing one. He's Gabriel's right-hand man. He's training the newcomers in the basics just the way Gabriel would, he's taking their weight so Gabriel can carry all the rest, he's dodging being forced to pick a side among all the petty factions. It works fine. Perfect partnership, from the perspective of someone... he would have said colder, but Gabriel is biting the skin on the back of his neck and sucking at it. It's as if he's never been untouchable, and that's taking Jesse into little pieces. Jesse reaches back to stroke Gabriel's tight-curled hair and wraps a hand around the back of his neck. Perfect. God. Perfect.

If he could just stop thinking. So maybe Gabriel is planning something big, and knows that what he'll set in motion will throw Jesse away from him. (A purge of Blackwatch troublemakers? Probably not, he knows Jesse would love to see that. Something bigger. A storm on the horizon, a darkening to the sky.)

That's why Gabriel is locking down Jesse's loyalties, closer and tighter than before.

The knowledge clicks tight into a certainty that's been there waiting for it. Jesse isn't just being manipulated, he's being disassembled and recategorized. Gabriel's hands on his skin are sealing him into place as easily as he'd stash a shotgun in a locker. He wants Jesse ready, dependable, for when he breaks all hell loose.

Gabriel's mouth drags a little desperate noise from him. All along, he's known Gabriel is more than he needs, too big to fit into a cozy little world. Reyes is only doing this so Jesse will do more, another investment. Being given nothing with everything is more than he can stand. Part of Jesse is gone over the horizon already. The rest of him?

Reyes knows him well. The rest of him can't go from under Gabriel's hands. He doesn't know if he could if Gabriel were to start choking him.

Reyes has stilled, breathing against the back of his neck. He takes his hand off Reyes' thigh to stroke a curious finger down the side of Reyes' face. Gabriel' eyes are closed. Thinking? Resting? Concentrating on reading him? Gabriel lips his fingertip, nips, sucks it into his mouth. Jesse presses into him.  Reyes lets his finger go.

"I know what you're thinking," his commander says, in a tone Jesse hadn't expected him to bring to bed.

Jesse rolls over to face the music. Gabriel moves his thigh over Jesse's legs and holds him there. Bodies this close, Reyes' heat seems a near match for the sunlight on Jesse's back. "You think I've lost interest in holding Blackwatch together. That I'm just letting them fight it out. That even this," he smacks a hand sharply on Jesse's ass, which Jesse doesn't think he's talking about, specifically, "shows I don't want to lead anymore." He grins. Jesse has only seen that grin for blood. At a range of three inches, it's ice down his spine. "Don't worry, Jesse, I do want to lead." He grabs Jesse's jaw, pushing his thumb in his mouth. It would be forcing, if Jesse were resisting at all. "It's going to be a lot messier if I can't count on you."

He eases his hand out of the way and kisses Jesse. It's shockingly easy for Jesse to put aside what he just heard and kiss him back. Gabriel grabs Jesse's hips and rolls his weight, dragging Jesse on top of him. Jesse settles down against Gabriel's skin, greedy. Gabriel's body has been past his reach for so long it's a luxury to run his palms where he wants. Gabriel is fucking stunning smiling back at him, white teeth, bronze skin, neatly groomed beard glistening in the sunlight.

If Jesse had just gone with it and never thought twice, he could die a happy man right now.  

That thought burns even while Gabriel's hands run into his hair and pull his face down, demanding. Gabriel's doing something messy about Blackwatch and the promotion at once. With a primary plan and some backups all waiting.

Reyes' thumb runs across a little mark from a lovenip. His grip tightens sharply, thumb pressing in until Jesse arcs with a noise of complaint. Reyes drags him down, kisses the spot, sucks on it until it's going to bruise a bigger mark than his thumb. Jesse's not able to stay still anymore, rested too long to be restful, himself. Gabriel's hands slide over his hips and grip his ass.  

McCree thinks for a fleeting moment, as Reyes kisses him (half invasion, Gabriel is still intense,) that he could warn Morrison on the way out. Sanity intervenes. What can Jesse say? "He's going to do something to usurp your command. I can tell, because he started fucking me" isn't going to help. Morrison trusts Gabriel more than Jesse. Besides, Gabriel will notice any attempt at a warning. Jesse tosses Morrison aside impatiently. If all his logic and instincts are wrong, Reyes is giving him everything, and he's throwing it away.

Jesse kisses back. He knows he's right.

Gabriel breaks off. Jesse gasps, runs his fingers over Gabriel's mouth. Gabriel, eyes bright, shoves him up so he can prop himself on his elbows. He looks Jesse up and down like he doesn't know where to begin. Just as Jesse is about to start an idea of his own, Gabriel casually hauls the sheets up and rips a wide strip off. His hands twist it easily into cord. Jesse can tell Gabriel is hoping for a struggle, so he braces his knees and finds stable places for his hands. Gabriel switches to Spanish to croon soothing words. He lightly grips Jesse's bicep, leans up to trace the brand with his tongue, all give and gentleness. Jesse would like to know who he thinks he's fooling.

He feels tied down already, saddled with the weight of Reyes' expectations. He's not leaving while Reyes is touching him. He doesn't think he can go while Gabriel is looking at him. But he's gone, he knows it.

Gabriel's still using the same soft voice he'd just used for comfort, but the last few words blur, and become: "I want to gag you, Jesse. Unless you want to beg."

"Please," Jesse breathes, just to see Gabriel' flush spread up his neck and down his chest, just to part his lips. Reyes flings himself up to drag Jesse down. Jesse struggles.

A little prayer flits through his mind: if Gabriel Reyes truly wants him, Gabriel Reyes will find him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to wait until tomorrow, but eff it. This is done.


	13. Fire Whirl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all burns down.

He leaves his datapad on Reyes' desk along with a few things: his medals, his knife. He would give more, but  he knows Reyes will sweep them in the trash, be furious, be...

He can't think of it anymore. He unhooks the loop of cord he wears on his arm. It has his Overwatch system alert and his Blackwatch badge on it, rubbing together, each leaving a worn mark on the other. He's about to drop the Blackwatch symbol on top of them, but his fingers can't seem to let it go. He carries another version more permanently, but this is still a part of him, a part of Reyes. He can't give it back. It moves his act from refusal to denial. He doesn't have it in him.

He drops the two little symbols in his pocket. He'll find a new way to wear them.

By the time the plane drops him off he knows Reyes knows he is gone. There is nothing. He withdrew enough cash for a time, he's expecting his accounts to be frozen - and they are, briefly, but the next time he checks they are moving again. He's not sure what to make of that.

He cries the first night. He aches to go back the second, the third. The fourth and fifth he drinks himself into a stupor. But he finally walks out of the hotel and keeps walking, letting his feet carry him into the wilderness. There's a little mom and pop solar farm on the way to the mountains. The wife gives him gingerbread and milk and chats with him. He stays on to do odd chores and help guard their crop of batteries. It's not for money. He doesn't need money. He needs to wait somewhere he could still, possibly, be found.

He feels like a tree papered in leaves of secrets, grown over with them, weighted. He feels like an old turtle shell his boot sends skipping as he comes down a slope, past the only need it was meant for, hollowed and worn.

When the season is over and their batteries are sold, when he has some stores saved and he stops reaching for a datapad that isn't there, he packs up his supplies and a fresh pan of gingerbread and goes into the mountains. He spends a season knocking around, working little jobs, recovering stolen things and guarding a man from an armed and erratic ex-girlfriend. He funnels most of his money out of the account. No one comes to find him. This complete freedom is like using a limb that's gone to sleep. Pins and needles, prickles and aches, joy.

He feels like a tumbleweed he watches bouncing across the sand, free, but rattling, pieces breaking and scattering behind it.

All hell has broken loose the next time he goes into a town.

He rides in with his hat low in a stinging wind, and looks up and sees his face on a poster, BLACKWATCH written large under it. He's grown a full beard in his time out, so he keeps riding. Something was unguarded in Morrison's Overwatch security. The news is singing it, _Blackwatch, Blackwatch, Blackwatch_. Secrets have spilled into the open. Some of them are secrets he killed to protect, bullets at a distance, once his own hands. The sweet little investigative journalist he lied to so convincingly in Tokyo is shouting her discoveries in Madrid. The name he worked for is spoken in horror, spat in disgust. _Blackwatch, Blackwatch_. It's not long at all before _Overwatch_ has the same intonations and both are spoken in place of the other. They've finally achieved true equality, in disgrace. He finds a nice, safe hole and drinks it away. Reyes bought him with a prison-free future, and damned him to the darkest pit justice can find on the globe. 

Eventually, he climbs out of his stupor and faces it. Reyes and Morrison have killed each other, as effectively as they have killed their organizations. The world's two most powerful warriors, super soldiers, have burned down all they stood for. He doesn't know what happened. He hears Reyes reviled as a traitor, Morrison cursed as a villain. Reyes is called the greatest psychopath of the time. Morrison is called a deceitful mastermind. Reyes is called one of the most prolific mass murderers of the century. Morrison is called a self-glorifying puppetmaster. Bounties are flying from all corners of the globe for Blackwatch agents. The law in many countries is clamoring for their appearance. Officials are elected on campaign promises to strengthen extradition laws and form arms of the military devoted to capturing Blackwatch agents and bringing them back for trial. On one newsfeed, Reyes and Morrison are burned in effigy, together. The crowd roars in joy.

McCree goes back into the mountains, not even bothering to verify his account's been frozen again. It hurts too much to think. The leaves of his tree have dried, curled. He burns with grief.

He spends a season just walking, seeing the cliffs and mesas of his childhood, listening to the desert wind, watching dust devils cavort and roadrunners dance. He drinks when he can and smokes what he can get.

He is pulled out of it, at last, by a woman that nobody will listen to. Her face lined, her hair graying early, she is desperately asking people if they've seen her brother, who came here looking for work. McCree takes her aside, sits her down, and asks. She pours it all out: the difficult trip over the seas, the trouble and work of getting identification, the bribes and safety money that needed to be paid, her brother's packing up his papers and following a rumor.

McCree listens, and goes looking.

First he checks the mine. Perfectly clean. Then he checks the packing plant. Not so clean, but the workers are talking about going home at the end of the season, and he sees two of them get mail.

Then he tracks up through the mountains to the power relay station. He hangs back in the trees and watches workers labor to recycle delicately woven copper and gold from burned-out cores.  More are brought in, scavenged off battlefields or stolen. The workers are shepherded at the end of the day to pathetic meals (meat-free, to keep them pliant with protein deficiency,) and a hard, concrete floor. A man stands outside with a gun.

McCree moves.

It's easy to get the manager; he's up in the office taking care of last-minute paperwork. The other two overseers are also simple, eating with the other guard. McCree is in and out with ruthless efficiency. Since nobody has given him orders regarding killing, he doesn't have to kill. Since no one has given orders regarding handling them carefully, he doesn't trouble himself there, either. Since it might be a long time until they're rescued, he does put some thoughts into how they're restrained. No sense in not crippling them, but then leaving them tied so their struggles can crush nerves, or stop the circulation in their hands.

"Thanks, boss," he mutters as he walks out the door. The voice that has been giving him tips and commentary quiets.

He got the law involved back at the office, of course. But there's nothing to say the guard won't notice something wrong, and less to say he won't shoot the workers before he leaves so that he can't be identified. McCree considers trying to surprise him. He thinks of the men inside the shack, exhausted on cold concrete. He wonders how many were worked to death or dumped in the wilderness.

"Son," he says, gun still in its holster, (no sense making the man turn and start shooting in a panic,) "I'm givin' you a chance to do this real easy. Put your hands on your head."

The man's about five years younger than him. "You got no idea who you're talkin' to, stranger, or what you got yourself into. You'd better drop your gunbelt right fuckin' now, and pick your words real careful, or I'm gonna shove that shiny belt buckle up your dead ass."

McCree picks his words real careful. "Draw."

He drags the body out of the way, so it won't be the first thing the men inside see when they're rescued. He waits until they're pulled out, then makes his way back to watch the little reunion. The woman sobs in joy, cradling her brother's head as he weeps. It's real touching, Jesse's glad for them.

"Who are you?" she asks.

"Name's Jesse McCree."

"Like the criminal?"

"Large as life and twice as feisty, ma'am," he says. "If you wouldn't mind not raisin' the alarm until-" but she would mind, so he leaves.

He feels like a fish he sees in the river, its mouth aflash with old hooks, a broken line still trailing, headed upstream with determination.

Jesse's social life has suffered. He sleeps empty-armed, wakes up alone. Reyes' voice is in his dreams. There's a shopkeeper once who flirts persistently, but his kiss doesn't have the passion, the burn, Jesse will never forget. He doesn't go back. Friends are hard to come by. Jesse's leaving a poker game he started with some bounty hunters when the little kid finds him. The hunters are going to get themselves uncuffed and untied eventually, and he means to get clear by then, but the kid starts: "you're Jesse McCree!" so loudly Jesse stops, not wanting her to keep yelling that. His freedom is his most bitter prize.

"Yeah, kid? Ain't deaf."

"My momma's missing," the kid says, sniffs, and throws her arms around Jesse's waist and starts shedding tears and snot into his coat. Jesse has another job.

Eventually, his money's going to run out, and he sure as hell can't depend on his retirement fund. He shouldn't have made those comments about the bounty hunters, since that's where his work's headed next.

 After the kid's momma's been turned up.

He wears the Blackwatch symbol defiantly on his hat, the Overwatch logo on a cord around his throat. It gets dropped in water with him, baked in sun with him, rattled and dropped with him. He's sure it's dead as all their plans.

Work-wise, he goes where he chooses, does as he pleases. He feels like an eagle feather he sees whirling in the wind; he reaches to catch, but it is already gone. He smiles.

One day the Overwatch logo starts beeping.

For a minute, he has no idea what that sound might be.


	14. Landfall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When it's all said and done, Jesse McCree is still Jesse McCree.

This... Reaper is hunting former Overwatch agents. He even seems to be working apart from Talon, for the time being. They were all deeply shaken by how close he came to shooting down Winston over Argentina. McCree is furious. He doesn't like the man anyway. Genji understands. Overwatch is still a raw wound, and anyone who pretends to echo Overwatch drives the older members mad.

("He still deserves respect," Winston said, and got back in his face a fierce: "Gabriel Reyes was a goddamn legend. Some asshole in a funny mask tryin' out the weapons, like Reyes was a walking set of costume parts, gets no fucking respect. Sure, we'll plan it out careful, but we'll drop him.")

They have no idea where to start looking for him. But they are certain that he is looking for them. So Genji showed himself. Left a trail. It was not easy to determine where Reaper was sheltering, after he began to stalk Genji in the train stations in Taipei. He is too dangerous a quarry to play with, so Genji kept them moving when they did not see an opening. But after three countries (and a near miss,) McCree was able to pinpoint a place where Reaper seems to be lairing. It's a fully automated solar farm, industrial scale, an empty city.

They are waiting there. Reaper knows they're in the area, is probably turning over their decoy with a boot right now, but will come back to prepare for another search. They will be ready.

The farm fills the canyon. Its surfaces are inky black under the hard, blue sky. Every exposed area is covered with panels, ready for the light. Strange, black orbs rise off it, eating the sunlight. The farm itself, except the middle core, constantly changes shape. Large panels clack open or closed, angle or flatten, as the daylight goes by.

 There is wide space in which to play. There is plenty of motion to distract the eye. Even the heat waves shimmering from the inky surfaces provide visual camouflage, distorting shapes in the air. Most of the shapes are slow, hovering platforms, ready to take filled batteries out to trucks. They leave little trails of blue light from the panels in their sides. Currently they cycle in an empty, useless way, moving on preprogrammed routes to scare birds from nesting in the farm, preparing for the evening rush.

Genji has chosen a narrow cable bridge strung with metal discs that hangs over a flat stretch of canyon ledge. There's a dark tunnel at the far end. Its doors stand open. Genji wonders where it goes, and if it is usually open, but the plant is too large to explore. He hangs in the shadow of the rocks, body curved to match the metal around him, hiding in plain sight. He has been watching a concealed shelter. Reaper will move there. Genji is tucked out of sight from all angles of approach.  

The place has rotated its panels halfway around by the time something happens. It's simple, but heartstopping: Genji feels the cables he's on suddenly dip with new weight. Someone has landed out of nowhere.  

Looking will get him killed. He leaps. His body is lighter than flesh, and the wind wants to help him soar. He tucks into a roll just as a shotgun blast concusses the air. He lands with his heart thumping in his chest. When he spins, he is crouched in the edge of Reaper's long shadow. He whips shuriken through the air. Reaper moves his forearm in front of his mask and throat, catching them in the back of his gauntlet. If they pierce to flesh, Reaper gives no sign. He holds no weapons.

He doesn't say anything. He doesn't move. The only sign that he is not a miraculously balanced statue is the motion of his hood and coat in the breeze.

This isn't what Genji expected.  He expected heavy footsteps. He expected threats. He didn't expect to be shot at once, and carelessly, like a man would toss a shoe towards a fly. Reaper is standing as if he is waiting for something else.

This is wrong. This is wrong. They missed something in the plan.

Reaper moves, now, a slow roll of his head to the side. Other side. He sweeps his arms out, opens and closes his fist, rolls his shoulders. Then he looks down. He looks at Genji. One hand lifts. He flicks a thumb across his neck, traces a long line, jerks it outward. Each gesture is huge, as if-

As if he wants someone to see it from a distance. As if he is forcing that person to react.

He knows Genji has backup.

Reaper steps off the wires as he finishes the gesture. Genji leaps away. The man lands with an impact softer than it should be. Is his body hung on metal framework, too? Genji glances back once to see him drawing both shotguns (as if the recoil of one weren't enough, how does he not have jelly for elbows?) and striding forward. Genji doesn't like the target he's being presented with for shuriken. The thinnest part of his armor looks as if it's on his lower ribs, to one side, where it has to flex and bend and cannot bear as many plates as the front. He backs away and scrambles for high ground, for a chance to reassess. Perhaps withdraw. There are two of them. But they are up against something more than he expected.

A shotgun blast pelts the handhold he reaches for into nothingness. The second one hits over Genji's head. He takes the hint. He drops, turning as he falls. He already has his sword half-drawn when he lands. Reaper is standing still, holding the shotguns raised. The fingers of one hand (clawed? those are metal claws) fan open. The gun falls. The second hand mirrors the gesture. The second shotgun hits the ground. Reaper punches one hand into the other. When Genji does not move, he raises his hand, fingers rolling impatiently:

_Come at me._

Genji isn't sure what the point of a fistfight is, but it's going to be damn hard to deflect spreading shotgun bursts with a narrow blade. If this man wants to sacrifice an advantage, Genji will oblige. A broken neck will do as well as a blade through the heart. His sword clicks back home. He approaches, ready.

Reaper is deceptively quick and graceful, coat snapping as he pivots away from a kick and comes right back in. At first, Genji is fighting a dark mirror. Reaper slides and twists through the fight exactly as Genji does. Genji doesn't understand. Of course Reaper knows the backgrounds of his targets. Is Reaper trying to boast that he has fought with the Shimada clan before?

Regardless of the message, he knows his own fighting style, and is ready when he sees an opening. A kick gets past that spiked gauntlet and knocks Reaper back. Genji wants to lunge to follow up, but he sees Reaper's rear foot plant and his hands open, sees the trap. He balks. Reaper makes a hissing noise, half interested, half amused.

Then he gets serious.

The man uses intimidation like a weapon. He might well panic a less experienced enemy. The fluidity of his movements has straightened, replaced with something economical and merciless. Genji's fighting style adjusts itself, dancing, dodging. Everything about Reaper's fighting style is meant to overwhelm, or to maim. To clear the way for a killing blow.

Genji has fought a rawer, weaker version of this before.

"Did he tell you he was boring to fight?" Genji asks, falling into a crouch, one hand on the ground. "Because under your guidance, he was very boring." There is a laughing tone to his voice, because he is forcing it there. He knows Reaper chose to introduce himself.

Only, Genji he still doesn't know who he is. He couldn't trust McCree then, seeing the shadows behind his eyes and the violence in his hands, hearing his deflections and denials. He never learned of Blackwatch until Overwatch splattered like a dropped melon. When McCree stepped up for the recall, he was all worn, exhausted honesty, but would not speak of the past.

"Where is he now?"

"Gone for hel-" Genji drops, arm over his head. He trusts his visor enough that he watches through the bend of his elbow. The stranger has rolled forward as Genji moved, his own arm raised and head ducked. The flashbang hits the dirt. The stranger, not caught by the shock at all, raises one shotgun at Jesse McCree.

Wait. Shotgun? Genji's gaze tracks back to where the two were dropped. They're gone. He didn't see them get picked up in the fight, but he would never have missed that. _What in hell_? He snaps his attention back. McCree's armor plate will not stand up to one of those for more than a shot, close range. The impact might kill him anyway.

"Howdy," says Jesse McCree, holding his pistol steady, but pointing the finger of his mechanical hand beside it.

The shotgun is tossed from one hand to the other. A clawed hand spreads in a small wave. "Hey," he returns, with acid, false friendliness. McCree's jaw drops.

"Yo," says Genji, pitching in with a distracting lift of two fingers, because McCree is still at point-blank range, and he doesn't want Reaper's attention on solving that. It works too well. Reaper half-spins. The cavernous shotgun muzzle levels at Genji.

Genji's already moving before the shotgun booms, backflipping away. He's pretty sure some pellets caught his ankle. There is the sharp crack of a pistol. A second blast keeps him moving, off the edge, where the force will be diffused and his armor will bear it better. The platform takes his weight for a battery and slows to compensate for its new load. Genji drops forward enough to assess the damage (and rock the platform up to take another shot, if he needs to. The drop to the panels is not enough to be dangerous.) His ankle will still work as he needs. Around him, the docile platforms rearrange their pattern, expecting more loads to follow.   

Reaper is standing, shoulders hunched, fingers clapped over his gut. The shotgun is in the dirt at his feet. "Jesse."

McCree is white. The pistol barrel tracks smoothly down. It stops just before it clears its target. Jesse opens his mouth to speak. He stands wordless.

"You shot me." The figure sounds betrayed. "You deserted me. I would never have left you." A sharp cough, repressed. That's the thing that makes Genji realize that what he's hearing is the man's real voice. He is also hearing real pain. But something about that cough wasn't right. Was that smoke flickering around the bottom of the mask? Was he machine inside? "And now you shoot me. You're as ungrateful as when I first found you," his voice slows, dragging out, "after all that... history."  

McCree is silent. Genji has never seen him without a response. It is wrong. Genji crouches patiently. His platform is not traveling fast enough to carry him away before he can jump down, but he is not sure what he is jumping to. He waits.

Reaper staggers. Props an elbow against the cliff face. Bent over, hand still clasped tight on his armor, he tilts his mask up and flicks his fingers as if giving a thought. "You know what I was thinking, right before the very end? I was watching the explosion start, but I looked away. I looked to the door. Because I was sure you'd still come. I was sure you'd walk in, and I'd watch you die with it all. And when I saw that empty doorway, I've never hurt like that. I'd never been that happy. When I woke up it was raining red, little globes out of the sky. I'd never been so alone. And now I've found you. So you could shoot me."

"You never had to shoot at him. You never had to hunt survivors. You never had to pull a gun on Morrison. You never had to do any of it. All of that, all of that was you." Genji is only a jump away. Tears are running down McCree's face. Even against a wounded and disarmed enemy, he is shaken enough that he is at risk. Genji should be there. But Genji waits. Something is still wrong.

Reaper bends a little more, pressing his hand closer to his chest. "This... is your... gratitude?"

Genji was about to give up and jump to them, but he sees it: Reaper's feet are still firmly planted. McCree's bullets should have defeated the thinner place in the man's armor. He should be pierced. But he is still strong. It's another trap. Jesse opens his mouth to answer. But again, he is at a loss for words.

"This is... dying?" Reaper asks. Jesse doesn't respond. He looks awful, crushed smaller by grief, by some weight Genji can't fathom. His ever-steady gun hand is trembling. Genji stops himself from whipping shuriken into Reaper's neck. It would be wise to attack, but not wise to do that before McCree sees it is needed. Perhaps before he understands why the man does not seem hurt.  

Reaper straightens, sweeping his hand from his side. "Trick question." Curls of black ink whorl behind it, spreading through the air. They separate into dark mist. They wind back towards Reaper's armor, sifting into the cracks of his gauntlet, as Genji gapes. Reaper lifts his open hands like he's waiting for applause. He seems to only then notice Genji's shuriken lodged in his forearm, and flicks them out with a claw. He has the most expressive body language Genji has ever witnessed from armor and a mask. Genji can practically see his sneer. Little plumes of ink follow the blades as they flip free. They thin to tendrils and vanish.

Jesse's face is blank. He is still white under his tan, but the tears have stopped. When he speaks, it's a mumble. Genji jumps to a nearer platform. The rest have bobbled into confusion in the distance, and are sorting themselves out. "Them's - that's - Nike. Mercy's shit."

"You want to know the funny part, Jesse? The science is gone. I went back to pillage Metis for a solution, at least a better idea of what she had done to me. It was so corrupted I couldn't get anything from it." Rage is oil in Reaper's tone, spreading. Genji notices black mist sifting from the hole in his armor. He is not as invulnerable as he poses. The dragon could shred him apart, if Genji can survive long enough at close range. "She _experimented_ on me."

"Is that why you've been killin' us?"

Reaper's arms fold. "What's the 'us,' Blackwatch?"

"I've always been both."

Reaper's voice is different, lower, when he offers a correction. "I'm Blackwatch. You've always been mine."

"Mercy said you were gone when she found you." For a moment, Genji thinks he will cry again, but although his throat works and his face is stiff, his shaken voice finally continues. Genji is more disturbed that he didn't just argue. It sounds like the sort of thing Jesse McCree should argue. "She said you was ashes."

"I must have been, after what she did to me. You cannot imagine hosting it in your body. She fed me to it, Jesse. It is _eating me_. And it is rebuilding me. Yes, I am tearing the red out of Overwatch. I must kill. Who better to target than someone that owes it _back_?"

McCree's shoulders heave, but he straightens. "Nobody, boss."

"I taught you-"

"You taught me to do the hard jobs," Jesse cuts in. "To kill when it had to be done. There's nobody more fittin' to do this." Genji can see Jesse's face set. He is filled with relief. It is a thousand times better to fight with a resolved warrior than a despairing one.

Reaper also sees the change. He holds a hand out, palm up. "No. You abandoned me. You shot me. No more, Jesse. Give me the weapon. Get down on your knees."

"Might've done that if Gabriel Reyes said it." The gun muzzle swings up, aimed at the mask. "I don't know you, an' I ain't kneelin'."

Genji realizes that McCree has forgotten he is there. He's drifted further into the wind, anyway, he can barely hear Reaper's response. There are no platforms near enough to jump straight back in that direction. He's been carried closer to one of the solar-collecting orbs than he is to their little slice of canyon wall. He will have to find another route.

He glances over the side. The drop below just keeps growing as the hardworking little ledge moves. It is nearly past a long stretch of solar panel a fair distance below. Beyond that, he can see the canyon floor starting to creep into view. About ten meters after it moves over the open canyon, the platform will be near another, and that one's moving back the way he wants. He can jump to it.

A thought occurs as he starts to time the jump. McCree might have forgotten he was there. Reaper would not have. But Reaper seems to think he is no longer a factor at all. Which means he has a plan, and Genji is where he was expect-

He doesn't need to realize it in words. Genji leaps for the nearest platform, which is behind him, closer to the core than the cliff. He doesn't stop there. He flings himself further. The orb is the nearest high thing, so that's what he picks. It bobbles dangerously under his weight. He scrambles to reorient himself and stay on top of it. Reaper's white mask swings sharply towards him. He says nothing, just stares. The little platform, relieved of its burden, skims off. More are on their way. In a few more seconds, he'll have a route that will not kill him should he fall.

Reaper pulls something out of his pocket. A clawed thumb comes down on it. The platforms wobble in their paths. The lights go out. Every single one drops out of the sky, obedient only to gravity. They web impact circles into the solar panels or plummet out of sight. Genji is cut off from returning. Had he waited, he is sure Reaper would have delivered him to the canyon floor. He sees McCree run three steps towards him, whirl again.

He crouches. He can't distinguish words in their voices from here. He can get throwing stars accurately across the distance, even with the solar orb whisking under his weight. Reaper's armor has joints, thinner spots, to allow movement. He and McCree both saw one, but there are more. At least he can impede Reaper when they begin fighting.

Reaper's arms are still folded. Genji strains to hear. The canyon wind is merciless over the aids in the side of his helmet, tossing his perch. He cannot catch a word. Reaper lifts a hand towards him, although Jesse does not look. Genji bends as low as he can over the top of the bubble to stabilize it, straining to see the start of aggressive movement. McCree brings a hand to his face and throws it to the side. Is he demanding the mask come off? It would take a drive of twenty minutes to go across the solar panels to the canyon edge and back along it to where the two stand. It will be the next day before the panels stretch enough to serve as a bridge.

-Go. Jesse's mechanical hand claps across the pistol as Reaper spreads both arms wide. There's a bright staccato of muzzle flash as the man seems to grow taller. Genji flings a series of shuriken. But Reaper has just become mistier, turning. The shuriken are glinting, scattering off the rock wall where he stood. Reaper glides like a spreading thundercloud, trailing long streams of darkness behind him. He is moving faster than a man can run. McCree is running anyway.

"McCree! Jesse!" Reaper knew Genji's agility and comfort with heights. He predicted which of them would be scouting. He predicted that Genji would use the platforms as his extra space. He has to know McCree will run after him, exactly as McCree is doing right now. There's a flashbang in his mechanical hand, but that was predicted before, too. There is a chance he will kill Reaper. Genji doubts it. What's waiting in there? More mercenaries? Talon? The risk is not just death or defeat, but the destruction of their acceptance. Talon's enthusiasm for mind control is dreaded by all of them. If Jesse is unreachable for too long, even if Genji finds him, he can never be trusted again.

Genji throws everything he has into putting his voice across the open space. "Jesse, stop!"

Reaper is slowing. But he is gone into the tunnel. Mist plumes out into swirling clouds. He is reshaping, hidden from view.

Jesse has almost reached the curls of darkened smoke.

"Jesse! Jesse! It's a trap!"

Jesse McCree vanishes from sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much, everyone, for reading.


End file.
